(today)
Mr Parker said that his staff were doing “extraordinary things” to keep the country safe in the face of such dangers, thwarting plots and saving lives. But he cautioned that the increasingly “vast amounts” of material on smartphones and the scale of social media output meant that more data than ever was being created at the same time as encryption was making it harder for MI5 to access it.
(today)
Sky‘s foreign affairs editor, Deborah Haynes, said: „Investigators are looking in detail at how the attackers, captured on CCTV, seem to be looking at their mobile phones – potentially receiving instructions.“
President Sirisena explained that authorities are aware of „a small group“ of Sri Lankans who have travelled abroad to receive training from IS over the past decade.
(today)
The group’s suggestion of the establishment of a single source of communication regarding national security matters (NSC Media Centre) is to ensure the Government does not let Ministers make ad hoc and often poorly-informed statements, likely with the desired goal of gaining local political mileage and international visibility. “This is confusing Sri Lankans, and embarrassing Sri Lanka on the international stage. It causes anguish among different communities, and also deteriorates trust in the Government,” they opined.
(22.04.2019)
(29.04.2019)
Questions are being raised about how much President Maithripala Sirisena knew about warnings provided by foreign intelligence agencies ahead of the Easter Sunday bombings that left at least 253 people dead and injured more than 450.
State Intelligence Service (SIS) Director Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police Nilantha Jayawardena provided detailed reports to the President on at least three occasions, authoritative and multiple sources with close knowledge of the inner workings of the Defence establishment confirmed to Daily FT.
(5.2.2019)
Seine Bewunderung für Duterte scheint tief zu gründen. Schon im vergangenen Sommer begrüsste Sirisena die Gewaltorgie im südostasiatischen Inselreich. Gleichzeitig hob Sri Lanka ein Moratorium für die Todesstrafe auf. Nach der von Sirisena verursachten Verfassungskrise, die den Inselstaat zwei Monate lahmlegte und vor der Weltöffentlichkeit blamierte, muss die Versuchung umso grösser sein, den starken Mann zu markieren.
But many officials and lawmakers have said, publicly and privately, that they doubted the president was unaware of the intelligence on an imminent threat.
In addition to being president, Mr. Sirisena also leads the Defense Ministry, which oversees the work of much of the intelligence agencies. The officials say it is impossible that he would not have been briefed on a memo about threats that others at much lower levels had heard about.
(26.4.2019)
President Sirisena was informed about the foreign intelligence reports predicting the attacks on at least three separate occasions Colombo Telegraph can exclusively reveal today.
All three briefings were conducted by Head of the State Intelligence Service Senior DIG Nilantha Jayawardane. Jayawardane met Sirisena personally to brief him on 11th April and 16th April. President Sirisena then travelled overseas soon after the New Year holidays.
“The government from the very beginning wanted to keep the minority vote with them, so they didn’t take any action,” Rajapaksa said.
The violent attacks, the ensuing political uncertainty and an upsurge in nationalism is almost certainly going to strengthen the Rajapaksa family, according to Alan Keenan, a London-based senior Sri Lanka analyst for the International Crisis Group who has lived on and off in the country for nearly two decades.
(26. April 2019)
A police spokesman said Friday that police forces had raided a house in Sammanthurai, a town on the east coast, and that after a gun battle they seized an Islamic State flag, explosives and clothes they said may have belonged to some of the Easter suicide attackers. It was not immediately clear who had been inside the house or whether any occupant had been killed. Police said the clothes matched those worn in a video that the attackers posted online before the bombings.
(7. März 2019)
It said the government will seek an extension of the timeline of the UHRC resolution 30/1 of October 01, 2015, through a co-sponsored roll-over resolution at the ongoing 40th session of the UN Human Rights Council.
The statement stands in contrast with President Sirisena’s comments on Wednesday that he would send his own team to the UNHRC session later this month to seek a reprieve. He said the UN must allow Sri Lanka to resolve its own issues without digging into past.
(6. März 2019)
However, at the 30th session, the UNHRC relaxed its call for an international inquiry by opting for a hybrid court that included both international and local judges and prosecutors to conduct the probe into war crimes. At the UNHRC’s 34th Session in March 2017, the Sri Lankan government was allowed by way of Resolution 34/1 a period of two years to meet the requirements outlined in the 30/1 Resolution.
(16. September 2018)
This debate has been in progress since Lanka was granted independence by the British in 1948. It involves the disfranchisement of plantation Tamils in 1948, the passing of the Official Language Bill (better known as the Sinhala Only Bill) in 1956, the 1958 riots against the Tamil community and those in 1977, the two insurrections by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (Peoples Liberation Front – JVP) which were brutally suppressed, and the 1972 and 1977 constitutions, both of which stated that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala Buddhist country. These are matters which the country’s elite have consistently downplayed.
1983 was a pivotal year in the history of post-independence Sri Lanka. It was in July of that year a pogrom against Tamils in the south and east of Sri Lanka was instigated. Their possessions and business were looted, their houses burnt, many women were raped and probably 2,000 people were killed. This resulted in an exodus of around 100,000 Tamils from the south. It is not surprising that the civil war began in earnest in its bloody aftermath. It ended only with the complete victory of the Lankan state and the annihilation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) twenty-six years later. During the conduct of the long civil war there were countless human rights violations by both sides, with the civilian population being caught in the middle. The conduct of the last phase of the war, known as Eelam War IV,[3] came under particular scrutiny by the international community. It is this scrutiny that has angered that section of the Sinhala community that refuses to admit any fault on their own side.
(5. März 2017)
Mr. Sirisena himself addressing troops in the northern Jaffna peninsula on Sunday said he would not subject the Sri Lankan military personnel to any probe.
“I have clearly said that I am not prepared to serve charge sheets to our soldiers or to have foreign judges to try our security forces,” Mr. Sirisena said.
“It is my duty to protect the troops,” he said.
(17. Februar 2017)
Sri Lanka must employ international judges and prosecutors to ensure accountability during trials of those responsible for alleged war crimes against mostly Tamils, Human Rights Watch Australia‘s director Elaine Pearson told SBS News.
Ms Pearson‘s call, which echoes a recommendation in a 2015 UN Human Rights Council report of the OHCHR investigation of Sri Lanka, comes as Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesingh this week visited Canberra.
He blamed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s government for weakening the intelligence system by focusing on prosecution of military officers over alleged war crimes during a decades-long civil war with Tamil separatists that ended in 2009.
Das Haus in der Küstenstadt Sainthamaruthu sollte im Zuge einer Anti-Terror-Razzia von Polizisten und Soldaten gestürmt werden, als es nach Aussagen eines Polizeisprechers vom Samstag zu den Detonationen kam.
Unter den Toten sind demnach sechs Kinder und drei Frauen.
Sri Lanka’s former wartime defense chief, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, said on Friday he would run for president in elections this year and would stop the spread of Islamist extremism by rebuilding the intelligence service and surveilling citizens.
Sri Lanka‘s prime minister has told the BBC he was „out of the loop“ when it came to intelligence warnings ahead of the deadly Easter Sunday bombings.
Ranil Wickremesinghe said that crucial information about any potential danger in the country was not passed to him.
Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the country’s former defense secretary who helped end a brutal 26-year civil war in 2009, said in a phone interview with Bloomberg late Tuesday that voters are looking for a leader more like him in a presidential election that must be held this year.
Some of the confusion may have come down to spelling. Priyalal Disanayaka, the deputy inspector general of police, sent a memo to the directors of four Sri Lankan security agencies on April 11, identifying Mohammed Zaharan as the leader of „National Thawheek Jaman.“
The report attached to the memo, though, identified the group as „National Towheed Jamaar“ and said its leader was Zahran Hashmi.
There were so many variations of the group‘s name thrown around that a separate group, the Sri Lanka Thowheed Jammath, held a news conference to clear its own name.
He said information on possible suicide attacks on churches, hotels and politicians were received from Indian intelligence on April 4th and a Security Council meeting was chaired by president Maithripala Sirisena on April 7th, but the information was not shared more widely.
“Somebody is controlling these top intelligence officials,” the minister said. “The Security Council is doing politics. We need to investigate into this.”
The information received from the State intelligence agencies was not passed on to him by relevant officials, said President Sirisena, who helms the Law and Order, and Defence ministries. “If they had done so, I would have taken immediate action.