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2021-04-25 Southeast Asia
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Sri Lanka arrests top Muslim leader over 2019 Easter attacks
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[AlAhram] The Moslem leader and his brother, Reyaj Bathiudeen, were arrested in the capital for ’aiding and abetting the jacket wallahs who committed the Easter Sunday carnage,’ said police front man
Sri Lankan police on Saturday arrested a prominent Moslem politician and his brother over suspected connections to the Easter Sunday suicide kabooms in 2019 that killed 269 people.
Rishad Bathiudeen is a former Cabinet minister who currently leads an opposition party in Sri Lanka's Parliament. He and his brother, Reyaj Bathiudeen, were arrested in the capital for ’aiding and abetting the suicide bombers who committed the Easter Sunday carnage,’ said police front man Ajith Rohana. He said the brothers have not yet been officially charged but were arrested based on direct evidence, as well as what he called circumstantial and ’scientific’ evidence.
Two local Moslem groups that had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State
 ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group have been blamed for the six near-simultaneous blasts at two Roman Catholic churches, a Protestant church and three tourist hotels.
| One of the groups is National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) (also spelt Sri Lanka Thawheed Jamaat, Tawheed Jamaath and Thowfeek Jamaath), which had not only pledged allegiance, but had gotten training from ISIS experts. The other is Jamathei Millathu Ibrahim. |
Both Moslems and Catholics are minorities in Sri Lanka, where Buddhists make up 70% of the population.
Before his arrest Saturday, Bathiudeen wrote on Facebook that police were standing outside his house ’since 1:30 a.m. today attempting to arrest me without a charge. ... They have already arrested my brother. I have been in Parliament, and have cooperated with all lawful authorities until now. This is unjust’.
The arrests came amid growing demands for justice by Sri Lanka's Catholic leaders and community, including during a commemoration held Wednesday on the second anniversary of the attacks. Last month, Sri Lankan Catholics also attended Mass dressed in black and held placards in a silent ’Black Sunday’ protest.
Most of the people connected to the groups accused of carrying out the attacks have been arrested, but Archbishop of Colombo Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith has insisted the bombings couldn't have been planned by the leader who did away with himself in one of the attacks.
The government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who came to power later in 2019 after promising to determine the truth behind the attacks, is under pressure to find the criminal mastermind.
His government accused an Islamic holy man arrested soon after the attacks of being the organizer, but the claim has not been accepted by the Catholic Church, which suspects there was larger foreign involvement.
Ranjith, the archbishop, has said a presidential commission that investigated the attacks focused on failures by those in political power at the time to prevent the bombings, instead of on finding the people who were directly responsible.
A power struggle between the then-president and prime minister, which led to a communications breakdown and a resulting lapse in security coordination, is said to have enabled the attacks, which occurred despite prior foreign intelligence warnings.
The Moslem community in Sri Lanka has disowned the attackers and did not allow their bodies to be buried in its cemeteries to show their actions are not part of Islam.
Nine suicide bombers, belonging to local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat (NTJ) linked to ISIS, carried out a series of blasts that tore through three churches and as many luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday on April 21, 2019.
In May last year, Riyaj was arrested for making contacts with suicide bombers and given bail in October. Rishad, a former Minister of Industry and Commerce, was arrested in October and given bail in November over the misappropriation of state resources. Their arrests came just after the second anniversary of the deadly attacks. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2021-04-25 00:27||
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