A Sri Lankan court has sentenced a former police chief and a former Defense Ministry official to death after finding them guilty of criminal negligence for the Easter Sunday bombings that killed 260 people in 2019.
Former Police Chief Pujith Jayasundara and former Defense Ministry Secretary Hemasiri Fernando were convicted and sentenced in a 2-1 decision on Friday by the three-member High Court bench.
The judgments at the special fast-track court came after the state appealed against a 2022 decision that acquitted the duo.
The coordinated bombings in 2019 were carried out at three tourist hotels and three churches — two of them Catholic and one Protestant. A parliamentary committee found that police and intelligence officials failed to act on repeated intelligence warnings of the attacks.
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