Two ex-Sri Lanka officials sentenced to death over 2019 Easter bombings

What the report says

A Sri Lankan court has sentenced former police chief Pujith Jayasundara and former Defence Ministry Secretary Hemasiri Fernando to death after finding them guilty of criminal negligence tied to the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, according to Al Jazeera. The ruling was issued by a special three-judge High Court bench in Colombo on Friday and came after the government appealed a 2022 acquittal.

The case centers on claims that officials failed to respond to intelligence warnings before the coordinated attacks on churches and hotels. Al Jazeera reported that a parliamentary inquiry had concluded police and intelligence agencies did not act on repeated alerts, including an April 4, 2019 warning from an Indian intelligence agency about a possible suicide attack. The bombings were carried out by two Sri Lanka-based ISIL-inspired groups, and the people believed to have directly taken part are said to be dead.

The defendants’ lawyer said they plan to appeal within two weeks. Al Jazeera also reported that a previous civil case ordered the two men to pay damages to survivors. In Sri Lanka, death sentences are typically not carried out because the country has maintained a long-running moratorium on executions, so such penalties are often commuted to life imprisonment. The case remains significant because it continues the legal and political fallout from one of the country’s deadliest attacks, which killed more than 250 people and wounded many others.