Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Thursday (25) vehemently refuted the allegations recently levelled at him by His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith concerning the 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks.

In a statement, Rajapaksa addressed four such allegations made by the Cardinal at an event held to mark the 5th anniversary of the carnage that claimed the lives of more than 250 people and left hundreds of others wounded.

Responding to the first allegation, the former president said: “I categorically state that I did NOT speak to the Cardinal over the phone after the Presidential Commission report was submitted to me and tell him that the recommendations of the Presidential Commission could not be implemented because that would entail the arrest of people and even the banning of organisations allied with me.”

With respect to the second allegation, Rajapaksa emphasized that ‘there was no delay’ in handing over to the Cardinal a copy of the first volume of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) report.

“The report of the Presidential Commission was handed over to me on 1 February 2021. Having studied it myself and referred it to the Attorney General, it was handed over to the Speaker of Parliament on 23 February 2021 and by 1 March 2021 copies had been given to the Venerable Mahanayaka Theras, the Cardinal and the Catholic Bishops.”

He also clarified that he did not ask the six-member Cabinet sub-committee to selectively implement only a few of the recommendations made by various committees and commissions appointed to inquire into the Easter attacks.

The former president further denied having transferred the CID officers probing the Easter attacks and imprisoning one such senior officer in order to sabotage the investigation.

Slamming Cardinal Ranjith for continuing to ‘relentlessly attack and criticize’ him over the Easter Sunday suicide bombings, Rajapaksa said the failure to prevent the attack was a failure of the CID under its then-director.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa - Response to His Eminence the Cardinal by Adaderana Online on Scribd