• Claims he never said that CoI recommendations couldn’t be implemented 
• Denies CID cops transfer & lone cop’s imprisonment to sabotage Easter probes
• Lays blame on failure to prevent attacks on CID   

Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa yesterday (25) refuted the allegations recently levelled at him by the Archbishop of Colombo, 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 fifth anniversary of the carnage that claimed the lives of more than 250 people and which left hundreds of others wounded.

Responding to the first allegation, Rajapaksa said: “I didn’t speak to the Cardinal over the phone after the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (CoI) report was submitted to me and tell him that the recommendations of the said CoI couldn’t 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 emphasised that “there was no delay” in handing over a copy of the first volume of the CoI report to the Cardinal . “The report of the CoI 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 Chief Prelates of the three Sects, the Cardinal, and the Catholic Bishops.”

He also clarified that he did not ask the relevant six-member Cabinet of Ministers Subcommittee to selectively implement only a few of the recommendations made by various Committees and Commissions appointed to inquire into the Easter Sunday attacks.

Rajapaksa further denied having transferred the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) officers probing the Easter Sunday attacks and imprisoning one such senior officer in order to sabotage the investigation.

Criticising Cardinal Ranjith for continuing to “relentlessly attack and criticise” him over the Easter Sunday suicide bombings, Rajapaksa said that the failure to prevent the attacks was a failure of the CID under its then Director.