Over 200 years in prison and many unanswered questions

Schoolchildren remember deceased relatives on the sixth anniversary of the Easter attacks. Katuwapitiya, Sri Lanka, April 21, 2025.

Colombo. September 22, 2026 is likely to go down as an important date in Sri Lanka's recent history: after countless days of negotiations, on this day a special chamber of the High Court in Colombo handed down the verdicts against 24 men from the Muslim minority who are said to have been involved in the so-called Easter attacks in 2019. There was an immense police presence around the courthouse in the capital of the South Asian island state. The images were almost reminiscent of the first days after the attacks, when large gatherings of security forces were part of the street scene in Colombo and other places across the country, some of whom had set up roadblocks for control purposes with the support of the army.

Nine accused are now released. The court considered the evidence presented against the other 15 to be sufficient, meaning that they were given long prison sentences of 200 to 260 years, including for complicity in murder, conspiracy for terrorist purposes and illegal possession of weapons and ammunition. All will probably remain in prison for life. One of the original 25 defendants had already died in custody before the trial began.

The terrorist acts of that time have almost been forgotten abroad. But in Sri Lanka the memory of the blackest day in recent history is still very much alive.

The terrorist acts of that time have almost been forgotten abroad. But in Sri Lanka the memory of the blackest day in recent history is still very much alive. The country actually thought it had been at peace for a decade since the civil war ended in 2009 - since 1983, the rebel group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had been fighting, sometimes using terrorist means, for the Tamil minority in the north and east of the island to have their own state. But April 21, 2019 once again shook society to its foundations. Suicide bombers detonated their explosives in quick succession in three luxury hotels in the heart of Colombo and in three churches in Negombo, Colombo and Batticaloa, where Catholics were gathering for Easter services. 269 people died, including 42 foreigners; almost 500 others were injured, some seriously.

About five years ago, a mammoth process began to clarify the background. Since the beginning of 2021, 2,309 witnesses have spoken in the courtroom, and the defendants have been charged with a total of more than 23,000 charges. The full version of the judgment, which the presiding judge Navaratne Marasinghe only announced orally in a very abbreviated form, is correspondingly extensive. In writing, he and his two colleagues Ramanathan Kannan and Sujeewa Nissanka submitted a judgment that, including its reasons, is 8,900 pages long, filling nine file folders.

The assets of the convicts, who are listed by name in most of the country's media, will be confiscated. These are helpers and backers; the bombers died when they detonated their explosives at the target locations. However, everyone involved in the multiple attack has still not been identified. It is attributed to the Islamist extremist group National Thowheeth Jama'ath (National Monotheistic Group), which had joined the international terrorist network of the "Islamic State" (IS) - which claimed responsibility for the attacks - but was previously largely unknown. It was banned a week after the attacks.

In the spring of 2019 there were serious, albeit vague, warnings from secret service circles. The government did not react to this because the Security Council in particular had not met for months because President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe were blocking each other at the time. It is unclear whether the attacks could have been prevented. However, in retrospect, increased security measures could have reduced the number of victims.

The official failure was also confirmed by a parliamentary committee of inquiry. It is still controversial how extensive the misconduct is.

The official failure was also confirmed by a parliamentary committee of inquiry. It is still controversial how extensive the misconduct is. Because of them, a former police chief and a former Defense Ministry employee were sentenced to death in July - in effect, that also means life imprisonment. The former director of the secret service, Suresh Sallay, was arrested in February and is still awaiting trial. The Catholic Church has welcomed the verdict but is calling for further clarification. Father Jude Krishantha, the spokesman for the Archdiocese of Colombo, told reporters it was "a strong message against religious extremism." No religion should be abused to justify such acts of violence. At the same time, he called for further investigations to clarify whether timely official action could have prevented the attacks.

His superior, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, had repeatedly called for a comprehensive investigation over the years. As the archbishop recently emphasized on September 2nd, international help is necessary to uncover the whole truth. Previous governments have been criticized for not being interested in this. Under President Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the left-wing coalition movement National People's Power (NPP), who has been in office since 2024, the investigations appear to be conducted with greater seriousness.