Sri Lankan court grants bail to ex-police chief and former defence secretary

Sri Lanka's former defence secretary Hemasiri Fernando and suspended police chief Pujith Jayasundera were granted bail on Tuesday by a local court, which ruled that there was no basis for their arrests. Both Fernando and Jayasundera were arrested last week after Attorney General Dappula de Livera instructed the authorities to charge them for their failure to prevent the Easter terror attacks that claimed 258 lives.

Delivering a lengthy order, Colombo Chief Magistrate Lanka Jayaratne said that the judiciary was not obliged to keep people in jail to please the wishes of the police or anyone else. Jayaratne ruled that there were no sufficient facts against the suspects to constitute a murder charge.

Fernando and Jayasundera were released on one surety bail of Rs 500,000 for each. The Chief Magistrate said the commission of inquiry appointed by President Maithripala Sirisena was not a sufficient ground to arrest and detain the two officials.

She regretted that not even a statement had been recorded from Jayasundera and Fernando before their detention. Jayasundera and Fernando were suspended by President Sirisena for their alleged inaction on the intelligence shared by India, which warned of an impending attack by Islamic militants, and thereby, failing to prevent the serial blasts on April 21.

Sirisena had appointed a three-member panel to probe the negligence by the top officials despite the availability of intelligence inputs on the impending attacks. Both Jayasundera and Fernando have testified before an ongoing parliamentary probe panel on the attacks. Both of them claimed that there was discounting of the seriousness of the threat at the very highest level. Sirisena is the minister-in-charge of defence.

More than 250 people were killed in eight coordinated suicide attacks carried out by local Jihadi group National Thowheed Jammath (NTJ) linked to the ISIS on April 21. Sirisena has slammed the parliamentary probe as one to pin blame on him and accused Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe of being the mover behind the panel.

The opposition blames the government's inability to prevent suicide bombings due to the ongoing power struggle between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe. Wickremesinghe has said that he had been excluded from attending the national security council by Sirisena since October last year.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)