Only Zahran’s or Ibrahim brothers’ arrests could have prevented attacks

PCoI on Easter Sunday attacks 

• If all the security agencies worked together, we could have minimised the damage

By Yoshitha Perera   

Only the arrest of National Thowheed Jama’ath (NTJ) Leader Zahran Hashim or the Ibrahim brothers could have prevented the coordinated terror attacks which occurred on Easter Sunday, April 21, 2019,  former State Intelligence Service (SIS) Director Nilantha Jayawardena yesterday informed the PCoI probing the  Easter Sunday attacks.    

He was asked whether having had adequate information, if all institutions had worked together, wouldn’t it have been possible to prevent the attack.

He said this responding to a question raised by the Chairman of the PCoI with regard to the foreign report that the SIS received on April 4, 2019 about the imminent attack. 

SDIG Jayawardena said that he did not believe that the foreign information which he received on April 4 was complete enough to prevent the attack. 
“If all the security agencies and political heads worked together, at least after Zahran conducted a dry run on April 16, 2019, we could have been minimised the damage from the attack,” he said.   

According to SDIG Jayawardena’s knowledge, Zahran and the Ibrahim brothers knew all the details pertaining to the coordinated terror attacks.  He said that Naufer Moulavi who was Zahran’s mentor, might also have known the exact plan of the attack. 

“This was a highly systemised operation. The attackers used an end-to-end encrypted messaging application, which was not used by the public. This application doesn’t require users to provide phone number or any other personal information,” he said.   

The application itself deletes the data after a few days and members could not contact each other again.