Sri Lanka remains powerless to confront the mastermind behind the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, despite the individual being well known to governments, militaries and intelligence agencies worldwide, former President Maithripala Sirisena claimed.
Speaking at an event organised by the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute on Wednesday (20), Sirisena said that although authorities continue to insist they are searching for the mastermind, the truth cannot be disclosed to the public.
“I have told the CID everything about how it happened, but none of it can be revealed. The so-called mastermind is already known to every government, military and intelligence agency. Even though we know where this person is, Sri Lanka cannot take them on,” he said.
The former President further alleged that serious crimes had been deliberately orchestrated to discredit him, damage his government, and weaken his political party.
Turning to geopolitics, Sirisena cautioned that the recently signed defence agreements between India and Sri Lanka could spark major challenges in the future. Drawing comparisons with the Indo-Lanka Accord of the 1980s, he claimed Sri Lanka had historically been pressured into such agreements.
He also criticised the continued dormancy of provincial councils, noting that they had been inactive for more than a decade, leaving over 2,500 officers idle and wasting millions of rupees annually. “These problems did not arise from within; they were forced upon us,” he argued.
On global affairs, Sirisena warned that world peace and sustainable development were under threat due to what he described as the “war mindset” of certain world leaders. Naming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an example, he accused powerful nations of fuelling wars instead of addressing poverty.
“Some leaders are mentally unfit — they cannot live without war. Imagine if all the money spent on weapons were used to help the poor instead. When I visited the US and Europe 25 years ago, there were no beggars on the streets. Now they are everywhere. That is the cost of this war mentality,” Sirisena said.
