Yesterday NEWSLINE reported the convictions in the Easter Sunday trial. The detailed sentences came too late for that edition. We now know that the 15 men convicted did not receive identical terms. Five were sentenced to 200 years, five to 220 years, four to 240 years and one, Abdul Manaf Mohamed Firdous, to 260 years rigorous imprisonment. Their movable and immovable property is also to be confiscated by the State.
The verdict was already enormous, but the sentencing details now make its scale considerably clearer. The Colombo Permanent High Court Trial-at-Bar has imposed terms ranging from 200 to 260 years of rigorous imprisonment on the 15 men convicted in the mammoth prosecution arising from the 2019 Easter Sunday terrorist attacks.
Abdul Manaf Mohamed Firdous received the heaviest punishment, 260 years rigorous imprisonment. Mohamed Saribu Adam Lebbe, also known as Gafoor Mama, Hayathu Mohamed Ahmed Milhan, Mohamed Ibrahim Sadiq Abdullah and Mohamed Ibrahim Zahid Abdul Haq were each sentenced to 240 years.
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Mohamed Ibrahim Mohamed Naufar, better known as Naufar Moulavi, received 220 years. Mohamed Rameez Mohamed Sajith, Abdul Latheef Mohamed Safi, Mohamed Mustafa Mohamed Haris and Rasiq Raza Hussein were also sentenced to 220 years each.
The five 200-year sentences were imposed on Mohamed Anwar Mohamed Rizkan, Mohamed Mansoor Mohamed Samsudeen, Huseinul Rizvi Khalid Sameer, Mohamed Hanifa Zainul Abdeen and Kachchi Mohamed Mohamed Jemsith. The result is therefore five sentences of 200 years, five of 220 years, four of 240 years and one of 260 years.
That detail is important because some of the earliest information emerging after the judgment suggested that all 15 convicted men had received identical 220-year terms. The fuller sentencing information subsequently established that the court differentiated substantially between the defendants.
There was another significant order which deserves attention. The movable and immovable property belonging to all 15 convicted men is to be confiscated by the State, adding a substantial financial consequence to prison terms which already amount, in practical terms, to incarceration for the remainder of their lives. The sentences followed one of the largest criminal prosecutions Sri Lanka has ever conducted. The Attorney General’s case contained 23,270 charges and the proceedings lasted almost five years, with more than 2,300 prosecution witnesses giving evidence before the three-member bench comprising High Court Judges Navaratne Marasinghe, Ramanathan Kannan and Sujeewa Nissanka.
The 15 men were convicted over their involvement in the coordinated suicide attacks of 21 April 2019, when churches and luxury hotels were targeted on Easter Sunday. Hundreds were killed or injured, but seven years later there is little purpose in NEWSLINE retelling today what Sri Lanka already knows painfully well about that morning.
What is new is the punishment imposed on the men whose guilt this particular court found proved. The difference between the lowest and highest sentences is 60 years, demonstrating that the court did not simply attach one enormous number uniformly to everyone before it.
Equally important is what happened to nine other defendants. They were acquitted because the prosecution failed to establish the charges against them to the standard required by criminal law, and they were released.
That should not be regarded as an inconvenient footnote to the convictions. In a case carrying the enormous public emotion of Easter Sunday, the ability of a court to distinguish between those against whom guilt was proved and those against whom it was not is part of the integrity of the judicial process itself.
Fifteen convictions and nine acquittals emerged from the same trial. Justice requires both outcomes to be respected because a criminal court exists to determine individual guilt on evidence, not to satisfy a predetermined expectation that everyone placed before it must be convicted.
The prison terms themselves are so large that their ordinary mathematical meaning becomes almost irrelevant. Whether a person receives 200, 220, 240 or 260 years, the practical expectation is imprisonment for life, subject of course to whatever rights of appeal or other legal processes remain available.
That does not mean every question surrounding Easter Sunday has now been answered. Questions concerning advance intelligence, institutional failures and allegations concerning other actors are separate from the criminal responsibility established against these 15 men and should remain separate unless evidence and the courts bring them together.
This judgment establishes what was proved against the defendants who stood before this court. It should neither be diminished by unresolved questions elsewhere nor artificially enlarged into proof of matters the court was not deciding.
Yesterday the important news was that 15 men had been convicted and nine acquitted. The information that arrived afterwards completes that part of the picture: the punishment ranges from 200 years to 260 years, together with confiscation of the property of those convicted.
For the 15 men the court found guilty, the arithmetic is extraordinary. Its practical meaning is considerably simpler: barring a successful legal intervention, they face spending the rest of their lives in prison.
Be that as it may, the scale of the punishment should not obscure the principle demonstrated by the verdict itself. In one of Sri Lanka’s most emotionally charged criminal prosecutions, the court convicted where it found the case proved and acquitted where it did not.
