Cardinal vs Mastermind

The Easter Sunday bomb attack on three churches and four hotels on April 21, 2019 that left 269 dead (including 40 foreigners) and wounded about 500 was a day of infamy. It had shattered the peace and tranquility if not also harmony that prevailed from 2009. This was after 30 years of fratricidal conflict (100,000 dead) and 18 months of terrorism (60,000 dead at over 100 a day in a year and a half between 1988-9) had ended.

The agony, grief and pain became boundless when it was discovered that specific actionable operational intelligence received on the April 4, 2019 and thereafter continuously until D Day (Apr. 19) from an undisclosed Indian intelligence agency had been handled with total incompetence and mindless indifference. Despite the said churches and hotels being accurately identified as targets, the crack STF was sent to guard the Indian High Commission where they did a great job!

Into this cataclysmic inferno that had paralyzed all government leaders, stepped Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith. By his words and actions, he prevented any retaliatory attacks in a country with a despicable history of mob violence. He was SL’s hero, honoured, respected and loved by all.

Foreign Intelligence and Investigation agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Australian Federal Police (AFP), Internal Security Department of Singapore (ISD), Israeli (Mossad) and of course Indian, investigated the tragedy. They reported back to their governments that all the perpetrators, ideological extremists linked to ISIS, a proscribed global terrorist organization, were dead. Blood relative collaborators of the two families involved, anticipating arrest, had committed suicide in their homes as far apart as Kattankudy and Colombo. Nearly 800 other suspects were arrested of whom more than 700 were either bailed out or released, bringing no credit to the already discredited Police.

Only 25 of them have been charged in court. There was no second wave although scaremongers and instant experts warned that there was a possibility of more attacks. Just to make sure, SL through its heads of missions in USA and Australia, contacted the FBI and AFP respectively. It reassured SL the case was closed.

This wasn’t good enough for some in SL where politically biased rumours are the essence of life. Uttering untruths is mother’s milk to the majority. About two years later certain biased media started creating doubts as to who had ‘organized’ the suicide bombings. Despite the conclusions reached by the world’s best known Intelligence and Investigation agencies (less the KGB that had no immediate interest) even the good Cardinal had been persuaded by discredited state intelligence officers that there was a suspected ‘mastermind’ with a murderous political motive behind the attack.

They had drawn attention to the fact that the dysfunctional government in power was vapourised at the general elections the following year. That this defeat was an obvious consequence to their miserable performance was ignored. No attempt to ask for India’s help was made. Why?

So SL was asked to believe that in its society there existed possibly two barbarians in the mould of Ghengis Khan who could plan and execute mass murder just to take over state power. They played on the inherited and exploited gullibility of the people. It was Goebbels who brilliantly proved that a lie continuously repeated was eventually believed. And there was no TV then. How perfidy thrives.

By coincidence a couple of CID officers too were apparently spreading this very same story about two military officers. That the local government elections a year before the Easter Sunday tragedy, had seen the despised government trounced, appeared to have been conveniently or deliberately forgotten, a national trait. It immediately drew attention away from the guilt of a criminally negligent government and police intelligence. Politicians who had been like mice then, now appeared and joined the chorus.

The Cardinal thereafter never let go. He didn’t think that the FBI, AFP, and other world class Investigation agencies should have the last word. He placed his faith in the informants from the police. Their Intelligence heads and the IGP were found guilty and punished (together with the President) for criminal negligence in the Easter Sunday massacre. He embraced them. The victims were almost all from his Catholic flock. He was fighting for them. He would be relentless and unforgiving to the point of becoming obsessed.

There was a time when defenestration was practiced by the Police. The deaths in 1966 of Sergeant Tilakewardene and Dodampe Mudalai after being thrown from the fourth floor of Police HQ was an example of how ‘evidence’ was obtained. Maybe the Cardinal did not know. Many Catholics however believed he was becoming political. He may have become insensitive to the fact that giving false evidence was an age old tradition. In that SL was world class

There were seven bombers. Four of them were poor radicalized youth led by Zaharan Hashim who even fought the more conservative adherents in Kattankudy with swords. The Colombo three were from a very rich and highly educated family.

The evidence the Cardinal trusted most were the ramblings of one Azad Moulana now seeking asylum in Europe, the involvement of Director Military Intelligence (DMI) and the telephone calls made by the hesitant bomber who left the Taj Samudra hotel and blew himself up in a ‘hotel’ near the Dehiwala Zoo.

According to Moulana, self styled ‘Coordinating Secretary’ to Pillayan and now a self-confessed accomplice to acts of terror thereafter, the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) and Pillayan who was in Batticaloa prison, conspired to brain wash and train Zaharan and three others to murder Christians. The four were being held in the same prison as Pillayan.

The fact that the Director of Military Intelligence (DMI), Maj Gen Suresh Sallay, had been serving at the SL High Commission in Malaysia from 2017 for two years and immediately thereafter one year (2019) in Delhi at the National Defence College (NDC) at the exact time he was supposed to be in SL, appeared to be of no consequence to Moulana and his new ‘accomplices’. They said Gen Sallay had visited SL between tours.

This was supposed to be enough time to visit Batticaloa prison, conspire with four terrorist suspects (who had vandalized a Buddha statue in Mawanella) to kill two policemen on guard duties at Vavanativu, train them in shooting, and store explosives and detonators in Puttalam. Was Gen Sallay training at the College of SL Miracles and not the NDC?

Who is Maj Gen Suresh Sallay? Did the Cardinal know he had been an outstanding officer after initially joining the Infantry (Gemunu Watch). He ended up serving in the Military Intelligence Corps where his intellect, analytical skills, trilingual fluency and excellent writing skills, if not his rugby were assets. He became DMI and was later the first military officer to head the State Intelligence Service (SIS) in a 40-year career. His mother is a Catholic, father a Malay and his wife a Buddhist. Is it the profile of a ‘mastermind’ of a radicalized extremist terror group that the Cardinal and his informants prefer to believe.

Finally, let’s get back to the Taj Samudra hotel bomber who hesitated. He was seen coming out of the hotel without detonating his bomb. He was seen on CCTV talking to someone. That was apparently conclusive evidence that he had a handler who was reporting to a mastermind. He went from there to an obscure ‘hotel’ near the Dehiwala Zoo. Later he was seen going to a mosque for prayers after which he went back to the same ‘hotel’ where he blew himself up, killing two people, not obviously an agreed target.

But what if there is a recording of his conversation? Was it with a woman? Could the woman be his wife? Who else would a suicide bomber listen to and then hesitate to perform? Who else would attempt to dissuade him other than a person who knew she would be a widow soon, if she did not succeed? Can the Cardinal and his informants mull this over?

Is this why the Cardinal has now said he was going to take to the streets? He has said he is unhappy that the government leader who said he would bring the mastermind to face justice has disappointed. The Cardinal would lead protests on the streets. Actually it is the Katunayake highway. His followers would march up and down from Katuneriya to Colombo and back.

Are his informants converts not to the church but to political opportunism? Did they rush to the Cardinal to ask for still more time? Maybe until doomsday? Maybe the very Good Cardinal and his closest lieutenants will now have more time to attend to the church and all his flock instead of bucking the world’s best Intelligence and Investigation agencies and cavorting with imaginary masterminds.

What must not happen is that this endless mistaken media extravaganza does not end in communal disharmony or worse. It has thus far been avoided as the pain that the Catholics endure has been shared by all.

There should also be an apology to Gen Suresh Sallay too. He has conducted himself with dignity and restraint as an officer and gentleman under extreme stress in deference to the Cardinal.

by Zingara