Colombo, Former Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Friday moved the Supreme Court seeking protection from arrest under anti-terrorism laws in connection with the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed nearly 270 people.
The petition had sought an order preventing the police’s Criminal Investigation Department from arresting him. His lawyers had argued that there were no reasonable grounds to impose the travel ban on him in connection with the Easter Sunday investigation. In July, former police chief Pujith Jayasundera and Hemasiri Fernando, then the top bureaucrat in the Defence Ministry, were sentenced to death after being found guilty of criminal dereliction of duty for failing to act on prior intelligence that could have prevented the attacks.
The appeal comes after the Court of Appeal dismissed Rajapaksa’s writ petition on October 1 without a hearing. In September, a Sri Lankan court found 15 people guilty of involvement in the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks and sentenced each of them to more than 200 years in prison. Rajapaksa’s wife Shiranthi Rajapaksa was arrested on Wednesday in a corruption case for allegedly misusing Sri Lankan rupees 10 million in public funds, as the country’s anti-graft authority also arrested an ex-foreign minister and a former state bank chief in separate cases.
The state, however, had told the court that it could give no undertaking that Rajapaksa would not be arrested.
In June, the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court imposed an overseas travel ban on the 77-year-old former president, a move seen as a possible precursor to his arrest over the investigation. Rajapaksa, who served as president from 2019 until he was forced to step down amid mass anti-government protests in mid-2022, subsequently approached the Court of Appeal seeking protection from arrest.
