Sri Lanka’s Acting President Wickremesinghe seeks UK help in Easter attacks probe

TIL Desk/World/Colombo/ Sri Lanka’s Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday sought the assistance of the British government and their intelligence services in the investigation of the Easter Sunday suicide attacks that killed nearly 270 people and battered the island nation’s tourism industry.

Nine suicide bombers belonging to local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat (NTJ) linked to ISIS carried out a series of devastating blasts that tore through three Catholic churches and as many luxury hotels on April 21, 2019, killing nearly 270 people, including 11 Indians, and injuring over 500.

The attack stirred a political storm as the then government headed by President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe were blamed for their inability to prevent the attacks despite prior intelligence being made available.

Wickremesinghe, who was sworn-in as Acting President on Friday after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled to the Maldives and then to Singapore from where he resigned in the face of public revolt against his government’s mishandling of the country’s economy, said that the absence of a proper Easter Sunday investigation has meant that this issue has still not been fully resolved.