Sri Lanka’s president will appoint a committee to probe allegations of complicity in 2019 bombings

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s president stated Sunday he’ll appoint a committee chaired by a retired Supreme Court docket decide to analyze allegations made in a British tv report that the South Asian nation’s intelligence was complicit within the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 269 individuals.

The assaults, which included simultaneous suicide bombings, focused three church buildings and three vacationer motels. The {dead} included 42 foreigners from 14 international locations.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s resolution to nominate a committee headed by a decide to analyze claims that Sri Lankan intelligence had a hand within the bombings that had been carried out by Islamic militants got here beneath stress from opposition lawmakers, spiritual leaders, activists in addition to the victims’ family members. They are saying that earlier probes didn’t reveal the reality behind the bombings.

In a program broadcast Tuesday, Channel 4 interviewed a person who stated had organized a gathering between an area Islamic State-inspired group, Nationwide Thowheed Jamath, and a high state intelligence official loyal to former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to formulate a plot to create instability and allow Rajapaksa, a former senior protection official, to win the 2019 presidential election.

Rajapaksa was pressured to resign in mid-2022 after mass protests over the nation’s worst financial disaster.

Rajapaksa on Thursday denied the allegations towards him, saying that the declare that “a gaggle of Islamic extremists launched suicide assaults as a way to make me president is absurd.”