“Telling lies”: Former President Gotabaya accuses Cardinal Ranjith

Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa rejects accusations of disrupting investigations into the Easter Sunday attack and accuses Colombo Archbishop Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith of absolving CID and its former Director of any responsibility in preventing the incident. He blames CID for its failure to prevent the attacks and nab the perpetrators before the attack was carried out.

Sri Lanka’s Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has accused Colombo Archbishop Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith of telling lies, at an event held to mark the fifth anniversary of the Easter Sunday suicide bombings.

“I categorically state that I did NOT speak to the Cardinal over the phone after the Presidential Commission report was submitted to me and tell him that the recommendations of the Presidential Commission could not be implemented because that would entail the arrest of people and even the banning of organizations allied with me. It is a well-known fact that the Muslim community, in general, did not vote for me or support my candidacy in the Presidential election, so I cannot possibly have had any allies in any organization that would need to be banned over complicity in the Easter Sunday attacks,” Gotabaya Rajapaksa said in the statement issued by him.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa also denied claims that he had delayed giving the Cardinal a copy of the first volume of the Presidential Commission report and that he had not given him the remaining volumes.

“The report of the Presidential Commission was handed over to me on 1 February 2021. Having studied it myself and referred it to the Attorney General, it was handed over to the Speaker of Parliament on 23 February 2021. By 1 March 2021 copies had been given to the Venerable Mahanayaka Theras, the Cardinal, and the Catholic Bishops. There was no delay in handing over the report to the Cardinal,” he said.

This accusation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, came after the address was made by Colombo Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith on the 5th commemoration of the Easter Sunday attack that occurred on the 21st of April in the year 2019.

During the commemoration of the Easter Sunday Attack held on 21 April, Cardinal Ranjith launched a scathing attack against former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, accusing him of “failing to deliver justice to the victims as he had pledged”.

He also accused Rajapaksa of disrupting investigations into the attack by removing officials involved in the active probe. “One key investigator was imprisoned, while others were transferred to distant areas. It’s regrettable that only officials sympathetic to him were appointed to disrupt the investigations,” he said at the time.

In response, Rajapaksa refused  Cardinal Ranjith’s allegation, stating that he did not transfer CID Director Shani Abeysekara or detain him to hinder the investigation into the tragic incident.

He pointed out that instead Abeysekara was transferred and interdicted by the National Police Commission over phone conversations the official had with former Deputy Minister Ranjan Ramanayake regarding the influencing of Judges.

 “Several months later he was remanded by the Courts over an investigation into the alleged fabrication of evidence in a criminal case concerning a former police DIG,” he noted.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa said Shani Abeysekara held the post over seven months after the attack which took place on 21 April 2019 and in the months prior it was the CID led by him which investigated the Vavunathivu murders, the vandalizing of Buddha statues in Mawanella and the discovery of explosives in Wanathawilluwa which was later connected to the Easter Sunday attack and its perpetrators.

“The Presidential Commission has observed that if the law enforcement authorities had been more vigilant, Zaharan and his group could have been apprehended before the Easter Sunday attack took place. The failure to prevent the attack was a failure of the CID under that Director,” said Gotabaya Rajapaksa in his statement.

Further, the Gotabaya Rajapaksa was saying that the public should take careful note of the fact that His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith either glosses over the responsibility of or explicitly absolves the two parties mentioned above while continuing to relentlessly attack and criticize me over the Easter Sunday suicide bombings.

END.