Former Sri Lankan president moves court to prevent arrest

Former Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Tuesday filed a petition in a court to prevent his arrest in connection with the Easter Sunday attacks. On April 21, 2019, nine suicide bombers, including a woman, carried out a series of devastating blasts that tore through three churches and as many luxury hotels, killing 270 people, including 44 foreigners, 11 of them Indians, and injuring over 500 others. Rajapaksa, 77, filed a writ petition in the Court of Appeal, citing the police chief, the director of the Criminal Investigation Department and the officer in charge as respondents. His attorneys told the court that there was a likelihood of his arrest under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

Rajapaksa, who served as president from 2019 to mid-2022, was slapped with a foreign travel ban by the courts in March, following the arrest of former state intelligence chief Suresh Sallay. Sallay has been in detention under PTA provisions since late February and staged a hunger strike last month, claiming ill-treatment in custody. Sallay is accused of orchestrating the Easter Sunday attacks to help Rajapaksa win the presidency in 2019 by harbouring and maintaining links with the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ), which carried out the bombings. The Islamic State terror group claimed the attacks, but the Government blamed the local Islamist extremist group NTJ.