Senior Sri Lankan officials ‘withheld intel on terrorist attacks’

The head of Sri Lanka’s parliament has made damning accusations against senior officials in the government, alleging that they withheld intelligence about impending attacks on churches, hotels and politicians.

A series of Easter Sunday bombings at Sri Lankan churches andhotels killed at least 359 people. Authorities have made dozens of arrests in the aftermath.

“Some top intelligence officials hid the intelligence information purposefully. Information was there, but the top brass security officials did not take appropriate actions,” Lakshman Kiriella, leader of the parliament, said Wednesday.

Kiriella claims that Sri Lankan authorities received a warning from Indian intelligence about possible attacks on April 4, and that this information was shared at a Security Council meeting, chaired by President Maithripala Sirisena, on April 7 but was not shared further.

“Somebody is controlling these top intelligence officials,” Kiriella added. “The Security Council is doing politics. We need to investigate into this.”

Meanwhile, former army chief and Minister of Regional Development Sarath Fonseka told parliament that he believed the attacks had been planned for some seven or eight years.

A confidential April 11 security memo contained names, addresses, phone numbers and movement patterns of the attackers from the National Thowheeth Jama’ath group suspected of carrying out the spate of attacks. Sri Lankan authorities also knew as far back as January that the group was stockpiling weapons and detonators.

Government minister Rauff Hakeem described it as a “colossal failure on the part of the intelligence services,” as in-fighting between Sri Lanka’s president and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe appears to have prevented effective action being taken to avert the danger.

“If the names of the persons involved were already known, why were they not arrested?” he added.

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