INTEREST GROUPS QUESTION

Six years have elapsed since the deadly Easter Sunday carnage left a permanent scar on the country’s political and national security domain. Despite the appointment of various commissions of inquiry under successive regimes, the actual mastermind behind the attack is allegedly still at large.

- By Kamanthi Wickramasinghe

However, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake recently promised to reveal the names of the real culprits behind the Easter Sunday carnage by April 21. Even though opposition factions scrutinised the President for making such statements, activists and interest groups who had been following revelations made at the Presidential Commission of Inquiry argue that the attacks could have been averted had the intelligence services acted upon this network of extremists, their whereabouts, associates and other information that was already available prior to the attacks.

Taslim’s story

Mohamed Razzak Taslim, from Dehiangaha, Mawanella is a social activist who had been committed to uplift livelihoods of people in his community. Since 1997 he had been working for various political parties, but when it comes to social service, party politics was no barrier for him. He says that he hadn’t worked for personal benefits but had been loyal to certain politicians who promised to develop his hometown. In 2014 Taslim was the owner of a farm with over 50 animals including goats and cattle. It was during this time that a former Cabinet minister during the Yahapalana regime invited him to be his coordinating secretary.