Was There A Conspiracy Behind The Easter Sunday Attacks?: A Follow-Up

By Leonard Jayawardena –

This article is intended as a follow-up to my earlier article entitled “Was There a Conspiracy Behind the Easter Sunday Attacks?” published in the Colombo Telegraph of September 19, 2023. The principal content of that article consists of eight serious objections against the most popular conspiracy theory relating to the Easter Sunday attack of April 2019, viz., the Rajapaksas orchestrated this attack to create concerns about national security among the masses with a view to influencing them to vote for Gotabaya Rajapaksa (GR) at the presidential election of November 2019 as a president who would ensure their security.

What two recent surveys confirm

In a survey commissioned in October 2023 by Syndicated Surveys, 30% of the respondents agreed that the Easter Sunday attack of 2019 had been carried out by “Sri Lankan extremists who [had been] working with local political forces,” 23% agreed that both “dangerous foreign forces” and local political forces had been behind the attack and 39% had no opinion or refused to express one. Only 8% believed that it had been carried out without the involvement of local political forces. [Note 1]

This means that, if the survey (which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3% at a 95% confidence level) is truly representative of the Sri Lankan population at large, 53% of the population believe that local political forces were behind the Easter Sunday attack. Interestingly, 53% is very nearly the percentage of votes that GR garnered at the 2019 election: 52.25%! It is possible–nay, probable–that the actual pecentage is even higher because a good percentage of the respondents who refused to express an opinion subscribed to this conspiracy theory but refused to express it through fears of personal safety.

The Parliamentary Select Committee appointed to look into the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks, which was presented to Parliament on 23 October, 2019, states that, having examined the evidence before it, the Committee “reached the conclusion that intelligence and other parties with a vested interest took steps over the years that culminated in the tragic events of 21st April 2019.” The “vested interest” is specified below in the report as “to demonstrate the lack of control by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government and amplify calls for a change of regime” with a question mark at the end. There were some who, before November 2019, went further and alleged that there had been a “mastermind” behind the attack and thus the Easter Sunday “mastermind” conspiracy theory predates the 2019 presidential election.

It is safe to say that practically no one who subscribed to the “mastermind” conspiracy theory in November 2019–or even its milder form in the PSC report mentioned above–would have voted for GR as president. Obviously then, this percentage of people could not have believed in this conspiracy theory back then as otherwise he would not have been elected president. Subject to the exception of the “revelations” of Asad Maulana, reported in the media beginning from September 2023, there has been no substantial addition to the body of “evidence” cited in favour of this conspiracy theory between November 2019 and now. And, even before Maulana’s “revelations,” it was an observable fact that the percentage of people who believed that the Rajapaksas were the “mastermind” was easily over 50%. Then what could have caused this change?

I submit that it was the massive loss of popularity of GR–and his party the SLPP–consequent to the financial crisis that gripped the country not long after he ascended to the presidency that mainly accounts for this change of public opinion. One who was hailed as a war hero and enjoyed a reputation as a dynamic go-getter, became the most reviled figure as the nation plunged into a financial and economic tailspin. Hence in keeping with the common tendency of humans to readily believe negative things about people they dislike, the new haters of the Rajapaksas rapidly embraced this conspiracy theory and swelled the ranks of the believers.

It is interesting–and significant–that, according to an Institute for Health Policy survey conducted in June 2023, 9% of the population were likely to vote for an SLPP presidential candidate. This is almost the same percentage of people who, as we saw above, do not believe that local political forces were behind the Easter Sunday attack! Is it coincidence? I think not. The 8% of the Syndicated Surveys survey probably represent the Rajapaksa loyalists at least for the most part, who were unmoved by the “evidence” for the Easter Sunday attack conspiracy.

The above survey results appear to confirm and corroborate what was already obvious to the perspicacious: People are believers or disbelievers of the conspiracy theory depending on their attitude towards the Rajapaksas (pro or anti), which confirms the truth of what I stated in my first article: In issues such as this, the opinions most people form are products of their ignorance and biases, not enlightened thinking. I daresay that many of even the 8% would very likely end up subscribing to this false conspiracy theory if for some reason they got disillusioned with and defected from the SLPP! I personally know one such case.

Formation of opinions based on one’s party, ideological, etc. affiliations and biases is a common human flaw. Donald Trump lost the last US presidential election but he refused to accept it saying that Joe Biden had won through election fraud. But numerous legal challenges to the election in court mounted by Trump’s side alleging voter fraud and misconduct all failed and ballot recounts confirmed that Biden had won. In spite of the absence of evidence for fraud demonstrated in numerous ways, many of his supporters still believe with him that the election was “stolen.” (This is comparable to so many Sri Lankans obstinately continuing to believe in the Easter Sunday attack “mastermind” conspiracy theory despite neither the numerous investigations into the attacks by the Government, including a Presidential Commission of Inquiry, nor international agencies such as the FBI and INTERPOL that assisted in these investigations reaching any conclusion that would support this conspiracy theory.)

It can go the other way too: refusal to accept a fact in spite of overwhelming evidence. The best recent example for this is pro-Palestinians either denying that atrocities were committed by Hamas on 7 October or choosing to believe a diluted version of it. One’s education level does not make one immune to this flaw. We have had an academic who is a regular contributor to this journal and a denier of Hamas’ atrocities on 7 October repeatedly glossing over the events of that day in his articles as merely “rocket attacks” by Hamas!

People’s propensity to form opinions and reach conclusions based on their biases—and ignorance—was evident in the readiness with which various conspiracy theories were propounded and accepted after the attack. There were some who jumped to the conclusion that the SLPP was behind the attack even before the identity of the attackers became known. A buddhist monk I gave a car lift to on the afternoon of the bombings wondered if the LTTE was behind the attacks. Various other conspiracy theories were not long in coming. Some thought that some foreign hand was behind it. India (RAW), Israel (Mossad), China, and, of course, the US (CIA)–the usual suspect in many things–were mentioned. This last was our “worthy” Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith’s first view, which he later discarded in favour of his current view because of, according to him, the slow and unsatisfactory progress of the investigations into the Easter Sunday attacks by the Government. At another time he also said he had changed his view to fall in line with the vox populi. The various conspiracy theories faded out leaving only the currently dominant view, which increasingly gained more traction as the Rajapaksas’ popularity plummeted following the financial crisis.

Why the conspiracy theory is a non sequitur

Subscribers to this conspiracy theory reason thus: GR benefited from the Easter Sunday attack; therefore he must have been behind it. In Objection 5 of my first article, I pointed out that countless examples could be cited from history where X benefited from event Y but X had nothing to do with Y. I cited the example of Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel narrowly winning the general election in May 1996 helped by a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings that battered the nation, though he had trailed Shimon Peres, his rival, in opinion polls before those terror attacks, yet no one accused Netanyahu of being behind the suicide bombings. In our case, unlike Netanyahu GR was actually the favourite to win the 2019 presidential election even before the Easter Sunday bombings, so it is not even certain that he could not have won without the attack. [Note 2]

Arguments for the conspiracy theory

The comments that were posted under my first article and disagreed with me were remarkable for the reason that their writers made absolutely no attempt to engage with any of the eight objections I urged against this false conspiracy theory. They had no answer to the objections but nor did they seem to be impressed by them, which is not surprising and entirely in keeping with the fact that believers in conspiracy theories are normally impervious to logic and reason.

A commenter of my article reproduced a litany of the sort of “evidences” typically cited in favour of this conspiracy theory and complained that I had “conveniently omit[ted]” them in my article. (He “conveniently” ignored my eight objections.) And this after I had enumerated the eight objections and stated that cumulatively they were so fatal to the conspiracy theory that nothing short of evidence of a direct kind could override them. Except the “revelations” of Asad Maulana, which were brought to public attention in September of this year and I deal with in the article, the other “evidences” and arguments, which are inconclusive and unconvincing for the following reasons, do not fall into that category.

1. Even where the basic facts of the conspiracy allegations are correct, they may have other explanations. For example, it has been alleged that certain intelligence officers, most famously “Sonic Sonic,” had links with the suicide bombers prior to the attack with a sinister motive. But, according to Rohan Gunaratane’s book The Easter Sunday Massacre, Zahran and his group had been on the radar of the state intelligence agencies for a number of years prior to the attacks and Sonic Sonic was an undercover operative of the SIS who had infiltrated the local branch of the Islamic State. [Note 3]

(Incidentally, this accusation of complicity by state intelligence officers in the Easter Sunday attack gives rises to a ninth objection: Does it make sense that these officers would jeopardize their reputation and careers, not to mention risk criminal punishment if caught, by conspiring to commit an atrocity of an unprecedented scale in order to bring to power a politician who was not yet in power? State employees’ success and career advancement depends on being loyal to the government in power, not to an outsider who might not have come to power even with the help of the Easter Sunday attacks [if there was a doubt about the person they were trying to “help” being elected].)

Early this year the Supreme Court found former President Maithripala Sirisena and four other officials as being responsible for failing to prevent the Easter Sunday attacks. Isn’t it more reasonable and sensible–and natural–to think that the alleged cover ups, such as erasing the phone data of a certain senior police officer, if real, more likely represent attempts to protect those responsible for the security and intelligence failures committed, which stand proven, rather than the alleged “mastermind,” whose existence has never been proven?

2. Some of the allegations have been proven even factually false. For example, it was reported early this year that DNA tests had confirmed that Pulasthini Rajendran alias Sarah (the wife of St. Sebastian’s Church suicide bomber), who was thought to have fled to India and figured in the conspiracy theory, had died in the suicide bomb blast at the terrorists’ safe house in Sainthamaruthu on 26 April 2019.

In an article titled “Time for Truth to Come Out,” published on The National Peace Council of Sri Lanka website in September 2023 (and reproduced in the Colombo Telegraph of September 19 ), Jehan Perera (JP) argues that;

the suicide bombers would [not], on their own volition, have chosen to target the Catholic and Christian communities when there was no history of enmity between them and the Muslims in Sri Lanka [because if] they had wanted to target any community it might have been the Buddhists, sections of whom have on many occasions rioted against them led by Buddhist monks. It has to be therefore an external “master mind” who was behind those attacks.

These views are both based on ignorance of facts and logically flawed.

Ignorance because, as I have explained below, (a) Buddhist targets were included in the original attack plan of the terrorists, which was changed due to certain circumstances; and (b) Christian churches were targeted to avenge the massacre of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch mosques in New Zealand on March 15, 2019, as Zahran states in their farewell video, plus the fact that in IS ideology, which Zahran and his fellow suicide bombers followed, Christians anywhere were considered legitimate targets for attack by their association with the religion of the West, which the IS regarded as their arch enemy.

Logically flawed because JP has not considered how you could persuade a bunch of local Islamic jihadis to kill a group of people (Christians) whom, in his view, they had no cause to hate while killing themselves and helping a group of Sinhala politicians whom they did hate–as JP would readily agree–to come to power in the process.

It behooves people in positions of influence to do their research properly before putting pen to paper and making serious allegations!

Another argument for the “mastermind” theory questions whether the terrorists had the ability to carry out such a coordinated series of attacks as happened on 21 April 2019 by themselves. Investigations have shown that they had the wherewithal, organisational capability and the technical expertise (bomb-making ability) to do this. After that it was just a matter of casing and selecting targets and then travelling to them with a backpack at a time when there were hardly any security measures in place in the country as exist now.

Zahran’s “suicide note”

Many who commit suicide leave a suicide note behind, which is one of the first things the police look for when investigating the suicide. In the absence of clear evidence of foul play, the suicide note, if proven genuine, establishes both the cause of the death and (usually) the reason for the suicide. The farewell speech video of Zahran Hashim, who recorded it in the company of his fellow attackers just prior to the suicide attacks, is their suicide note. [Note 4]

In the video Zahran plainly declares the twofold objectives of the imminent bomb attacks: (1) to establish in Sri Lanka the Islamic Caliphate (=Islamic State); and (2) to avenge the massacre of Muslim worshippers in the Christchurch mosques in New Zealand on 15 March 2019. [Note 5] Zahran also expresses his belief that following the attacks many in Sri Lanka will be pledging allegiance to the IS, to which Zahran and his fellows had also pledged allegiance and in obedience to whose rulings and commands, they, as the local branch of the IS, carried out this dastardly act.

On 29 June 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the then leader of the Islami State of Iraq and Sham (=Syria), i.e., ISIS, announced the formation of a caliphate with himself as the Caliph. Professor Rohan Gunaratna writes;

To build a global caliphate, [in 2014] the self-proclaimed caliph reportedly … instructed followers unable to travel to Iraq and Syria to kill non-Muslims in the country or the region where they resided. The IS envisaged controlling territories–including Sri Lanka–by 2020. In its map, Sri Lanka was identified as a part of the Khorasan province. [Note 6]

According to the ideology of the IS, which Zahran and his group followed, the Crusades, a series of medieval military expeditions made by Europeans to the Holy Land in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, never ended. The IS taught that the western countries that opposed them are the modern-day Crusaders, with whom they were waging war, from which they would ultimately emerge victorious. The IS also held that Christians everywhere were legitimate targets for them by their association with the religion of the Crusaders.

Gunaratna writes;

Since the proclamation of the caliphate in 29 June 2014, the IS emphasized attacking Christians and their houses of worship. … [T]he IS directed and inspired a series of attacks against non-Muslims, especially Christians. In fact, before the Easter Sunday bombings, the world also witnessed a global surge of strikes against Christian houses of worship…. [Note 7]

The terrorists’ original attack plan

The original plan of Zahran and other leaders of the IS Sri Lanka branch was to launch a series of strikes throughout the island in August 2020 but the detection of their base in Wanathavilluwa, where the terrorists had a bomb-making facility and stored weapons and explosives, in January 2019 by the security forces and the fragmentation of the local IS branch prompted Zahran to scale down and fast track the operation. August 2020 was chosen by Zahran to coincide with the Kandy Esala Perahera as he was personally incensed with Sinhala Buddhists on account of such incidents as the Digana Riots. Zahran was a fugitive and the fact that the authorities were closing in on him was another reason to advance the date of the attack. “The decision to strike on Easter Sunday was taken immediately after the Christchurch attack on 15 March, 2019.” [Note 8]

Gunaratna:

The targeting [for attack] was curated not only for disrupting social order but also to cripple the economy. Consistent with the IS ideology, Zahran advocated attacks against hotels, churches and casinos, which were places with high volumes of people and, according to them, kafirs [unbelievers]. … [Tourism] was a principal target. [Note 9]

Miscellaneous

Zahran apparently thought that their “martyrdoms” would be the catalyst for their movement to grow, for in their farewell video he expresses his belief that after their suicide attacks crowds of people will be pledging allegiance to the IS. This, as we know, did not materialize.

Prior to his death Zahran appointed his brother Rizwan, who died in a mass suicide with others in Sainthamaruthu on 26 April 2023, to succeed him as the next leader of the IS Sri Lanka branch and entrusted him with funds to carry on a second wave of attacks in his stead. [Note 10]

Gunaratna:

According to accounts, none of those involved in the attack subscribed to the conspiracy theory that it was staged by Sri Lankan intelligence or by a foreign government. Like most others, they too knew the truth; Zahran was driven by the IS ideology–and religious extremism precipitated the Easter attack. [Note 11]

I close with a correction to my earlier article. I wrote, “After the suicide bombings, white clothes such as are worn by women in Buddhist temples were discovered in the homes of the members of Zahran’s group, suggesting that they had plans to attack Buddhist temples later.” This was how it was reported in the media at the time but, according to Rohan Gunaratna’s book, Zahran had made a prior arrangment for the wives of the suicide bombers to wear white clothes during the period of mourning for their dead husbands (iddah). [Note 12]

Notes

1. “Over 50% of Lankans say local political forces behind Easter Sunday attacks: Survey,” Daily Mirror, 9 December, 2023.

2. In his article “The Specter Of Gotabaya” (Colombo Telegraph of 15 March 2018), Sarath Alwis wrote, “Gotabaya Rajapaksa will surely end up the supreme law giver of this blessed island.” This was after the excellent performance of the SLPP at the February 2018 local goverment elections. In spite of this knowledge–but not very surprisingly given his antipathy to the Rajapaksas–he ended up subscribing to this conspiracy theory as a recent article of his shows!

3. Professor Rohan Gunaratna, Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday Massacre: Lessons for the International Community (Penguin Random House, 2023), p. 51.

4. Zahran’s farewell video can be accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCU2lYBkzZw&t=7s.

5. “[On 19 March 2019] the IS spokesman Abur Hassan al Muhajir released an audio recording calling for retaliatory attacks [for the Christchurch massacre],” Gunaratna, p. xlii.

6. Ibid., p. xix. In “Acknowledgements” at the end of the book Rohan Gunaratne writes that he had access to, inter alia, information from intelligence services, law enforcement authorities, military forces and their foreign counterparts and interviewed those arrested after the attack. He had also travelled six times to interview detainee families in Kattankudy.

RG’s book, which I read after I had written my first article, has confirmed my view of the Easter Sunday attack and filled in a number of gaps in my own knowledge of the subject. I would highly recommend this book to any one seriously interested in this topic.

7. Ibid., p. lxv.

8. Ibid., pp. 10-12, 186-187. “Zahran promised to turn Sri Lanka into a ‘bloodbath’ after the February to March 2018 Digana riots, where Muslims and establishments were targeted” (p. 19).

9. Ibid., p. 20.

10. Ibid., p. 122ff.

11. Ibid., p. 192.

12. Ibid., p. 36.

The post Was There A Conspiracy Behind The Easter Sunday Attacks?: A Follow-Up appeared first on Colombo Telegraph.