COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan court on Thursday dismissed without hearing a writ petition by former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to gain protection from his arrest related to the 2019 Easter Sunday bombing, which killed nearly 270 people.
In June, the 77-year-old was banned from travelling overseas by the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court.
The move was seen as the first step in the possible arrest of Rajapaksa, the country’s president between 2019 to mid-2022.
Two weeks later, he filed a writ application in the court of appeal seeking an order preventing the police’s CID from arresting him.
The dismissal of his application on Thursday came after several submissions made by the state and Rajapaksa's defence lawyers in June and July.
The state had told the court that no undertaking could be given that he won’t be arrested. His lawyers argued that there were no reasonable grounds to impose a travel ban him due to the Easter Sunday investigation.
Last month, a Sri Lankan court found 15 people guilty of involvement in the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks and sentenced them each to over 200 years in prison.
Nine suicide bombers belonging to the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat, linked to ISIS, carried out a series of devastating blasts that tore through three Catholic churches and as many luxury hotels on April 21, 2019, killing nearly 270 people, including 11 Indians, and injuring over 500.
In July, former police chief Pujith Jayasundera and Hemasiri Fernando, the then top bureaucrat in the Ministry of Defence, were handed the death sentence after being found guilty of criminal dereliction of duty for failing to act on prior intelligence that could have prevented the attacks.