Sri Lanka’s High Court has sentenced 15 men to lengthy prison terms for plotting the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, which killed 270 people and injured more than 500.
The convicted men were handed individual sentences ranging from 200 to 260 years. The court in Colombo also ordered the confiscation of their movable and immovable assets.
Among those convicted was Naufer Moulavi, whom prosecutors identified as the mastermind behind the coordinated suicide bombings. Nine other defendants were acquitted.
The attacks on three churches and three luxury hotels were the deadliest in Sri Lanka since the end of its civil war in 2009. Forty-five foreign nationals were among those killed.
All the suicide bombers died in the attacks. Investigators previously attributed the bombings to Islamist extremists, while the 25 men originally indicted were from Sri Lanka’s Muslim minority. One of the accused later died in custody.
The 15 convicted men had faced more than 23,000 charges and were brought to court in pairs, handcuffed together, aboard two prison buses.
Most of the victims were Sri Lankans, including children. Those killed included celebrity chef Shantha Mayadunne and her daughter, a family of five, hotel employees and members of another family from Negombo.
Among the foreign victims were 11 Indians, eight Britons and five Americans, as well as nationals from Australia, Bangladesh, China, Denmark, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.
Three children of Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen were also killed in the attack while the family was staying at the Shangri-La hotel.
The bombings triggered widespread scrutiny of Sri Lanka’s security agencies, with authorities acknowledging a major intelligence failure. Parliament was told that information from India warning of a possible attack had not been properly shared with relevant authorities.
In 2023, Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court ordered former president Maithripala Sirisena to pay millions in compensation to victims after finding him responsible for national security failures linked to the attacks.
Last month, two former senior officials were sentenced to death for criminal negligence over the bombings. However, death sentences in Sri Lanka are generally commuted to life imprisonment because of the country’s long-standing moratorium on executions.
The latest verdict comes amid continued demands from victims’ families and activists for accountability over the attacks.
A separate investigation is also under way into former intelligence chief Suresh Sallay, who has been accused of allegedly orchestrating the bombings with Islamist extremists. Sallay was arrested in February and denies the allegations.
The allegations were also raised in a 2023 Channel 4 documentary, which featured testimony from a whistleblower claiming the attacks had been allowed to happen to boost support for the politically dominant Rajapaksa family.
Sallay has denied the allegations, while former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was elected months after the attacks after campaigning on tackling Islamist extremism, has also rejected the claims.
Rajapaksa, who has been barred from leaving Sri Lanka, has asked the court to prevent his possible arrest in connection with the ongoing investigations.
