The Sri Lankan government announced this Sunday that it has requested the support of the London Metropolitan Police, known as Scotland Yard, to investigate the bloody jihadist attacks on Easter Sunday in 2019, which left 269 dead and hundreds injured.
“Scotland Yard has been asked to come in, review the reports and come to a final conclusion on this whole matter to determine if there was a hidden hand behind the attack,” the country’s government said in a statement.
The attacks on three churches and three luxury hotels on Easter Sunday 2019 were claimed by the jihadist Islamic State (IS) and carried out by the local Islamist group National Thowheed Jamaat, and were a central element of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s electoral victory, who came to the presidency with a campaign committed to guaranteeing the country’s security.
The current president of the island nation, Ranil Wickremesinghe, stressed during a meeting with the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Power, that new anti-terrorist legislation will be introduced to replace the current one, which allows , among other matters, arrest up to one year without trial.
Organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) have repeatedly called for an end to the use of “draconian anti-terrorism laws” in Sri Lanka, especially in recent months, where authorities are alleged to have taken advantage of them to arrest protesters. peacefully during the wave of protests that led to Rajapaksa’s resignation and flight from the country in July.
Sri Lanka is going through the worst economic crisis since its independence from the British Empire in 1948, caused in part by heavy debt, misguided government policies and the impact of the Easter attacks and the pandemic on tourism.
The severe economic crisis on the island, which has dried up its foreign currency reserves, has left the nation without sufficient liquidity to acquire energy resources, fuel or gas, which has led to rigorous daily electricity rationing.
In this sense, USAID promised an aid program of 40 million dollars that will be destined to cover the needs of the families most affected by the economic crisis.