Two former Sri Lanka officials sentenced to death for negligence in deadly Easter bombings

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — A Sri Lankan court on Friday sentenced a former police chief and a former top Defense Ministry official to death after finding them guilty of criminal negligence that allowed Islamic State-inspired bomb attacks on Easter Sunday in 2019, which killed more than 260 people.

A death penalty in Sri Lanka typically means life in prison because the country has had a moratorium on executions since 1976. Current President Anura Kumara Dissanayake supports maintaining the moratorium.

Former Police Chief Pujith Jayasundara and former Defense Ministry Secretary Hemasiri Fernando were convicted and sentenced Friday by the three-member High Court bench. They have the right to appeal the ruling.

The near-simultaneous bombings in 2019 were carried out at three tourist hotels and three churches — two of them Catholic and one Protestant — and killed 42 foreigners. A parliamentary committee found that police and intelligence officials failed to act on repeated intelligence warnings of the attacks.

The court delivered the verdict against Jayasundara first and then against Fernando later in the day. The death sentence came as a majority decision, with two judges agreeing and one judge writing a dissent arguing that both should go free.

Two Sri Lanka-based Islamic militant groups were accused of carrying out the bombings, and none of those believed to have been directly involved are living. Separate trials are taking place for people allegedly connected with the perpetrators.

Sri Lanka’s Catholic Church has claimed that those identified so far as perpetrators are not the masterminds behind the bombings, and that there was a bigger conspiracy behind the attacks.

Krishan Francis, The Associated Press