Sri Lanka Easter Sunday Blasts Case: 15 Convicted Over 2019 Bombings, Sentenced To 220 Years Each; All To Appeal Against Verdict

Colombo: Fifteen people, sentenced to over 200 years each in prison by a Sri Lankan court for their involvement in the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks, will appeal their record jail sentences, a defence lawyer said on Wednesday.

Nine suicide bombers belonging to the local Islamist extremist group, the National Thawheed Jamaat, linked to ISIS, targeted three Catholic churches and three luxury hotels on April 21, 2019, killing nearly 270 people, including 11 Indians, and injuring over 500 others.

A three-judge High Court Trial-at-Bar comprising Judges Navaratne Marasinghe, Ramanathan Kannan and Sujeewa Nissanka on Tuesday found 15 of the 24 accused guilty of involvement in the attacks and sentenced each to more than 200 years in prison.

Defence counsel Kneel Maddumage, who represented seven accused, said they would appeal the convictions as well as the record terms in the Supreme Court after receiving the relevant documents.

"Some of the defendants are not represented by counsel, but I requested on behalf of all the convicts that they be provided with copies of the proceedings to file their appeals," Maddumage said.

Initially, 25 people were charged over their role in the bombings. Following the death of one of the accused, 24 were indicted in October 2021.

A total of 23,270 charges were brought against them, while 2,309 witnesses testified for the prosecution.

Catholic Church spokesman Father Jude Krishantha welcomed the verdict, saying it has brought a sense of justice to the victims.

"We feel satisfied because the relatives of those who died were expecting justice," Krishantha said.

In July, former defence ministry bureaucrat Hemasiri Fernando and former police chief Pujith Jayasundara were sentenced to death for failing to act on prior intelligence that could have prevented the attacks.

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

A presidential panel of inquiry appointed by Sirisena after the attacks ironically found the then-president guilty of his failure to prevent the attacks.

Sirisena, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge in the case filed after the panel's findings.

Sirisena and the top defence hierarchy were ordered to pay multiple millions of rupees as compensation to the kith and kin of the blast victims in the fundamental rights petitions verdicts delivered in 2023. 

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