Sri Lanka’s Attorney General has indicted three men over an alleged 2022 plot to detonate a bomb at All Saints’ Church in Borella, Colombo.
The accused, identified as Liyanage Dayananda, Dr H. D. Shirley Felician Herath, and K. A. Ruwansiri Hemantha, have been indicted under the Offensive Weapons Act, reports the Sunday Times.
The indictment contains charges including a conspiracy to set off a bomb at All Saints’ Church between 12 July 2021 and 11 January 2022, and a second charge relates to the attempted bombing of the church on 11 January 2022.
Some 31 witnesses and seven court exhibits are expected to be produced by the prosecution.
The case comes amid heightened public sensitivity around attacks on churches in Sri Lanka, following the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings in which suicide attacks targeted churches and hotels across the island. Those coordinated bombings killed more than 260 people and injured hundreds more.
Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has described the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings as “the greatest tragedy to seize power”, in pointed remarks earlier this year that appeared to implicate former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his political allies.
In the aftermath, it was revealed that Sri Lankan intelligence agencies had received multiple warnings, including from foreign services, about the likelihood of an attack, but failed to act. A 2023 Channel 4 documentary that investigated the Easter Sunday attacks and alleged deep ties between Sri Lankan military intelligence and extremist Islamist groups. The documentary specifically accused senior military officials, alongside Pillayan and Karuna, of facilitating or enabling the attacks as part of a strategy to manufacture a security crisis ahead of the 2019 presidential election, paving the way for Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory.