COLOMBO: Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s former president who is being increasing looked at by the island nation for a strong-willed response to the new threat of Islamic terrorism, has thanked India for the help in uncovering the plot but said he does not want any foreign forces, like the National Security Guard, on its soil.
“India has been helpful. But there is no need for the NSG to come in. We don't need foreign soldiers. Our forces are capable enough… (We) just need to give them powers and freedom,” he told media in an exclusive interview. Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose younger brother Gotabaya is preparing to run for President later this year, accused the President and Prime Minister of ignoring national security for vote bank politics.
The former president, who was involved in a soft coup attempt last year, blasted the Sri Lankan government and said both President Maithripala Sirisena, who is also the minister of defense and in charge of national police, and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has been kept out of high-level security meetings since Sirisena tried to oust him last fall, were responsible for the series of blasts in which over 250 people were killed on Easter Sunday.
'They are busy playing politics at the cost of national security. Everyone knew about the growth of radicalism. They were worried about votes and their vote bank and did not act," Rajapaksa told media.
Most Sri Lanka Islamist radicals killed or arrested: Sri Lankan forces have killed or arrested most of the radical Islamists linked to the Easter suicide bombings and the country is ready to return to normality, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said Sunday. But the prime minister said the government had planned tougher laws to deal with Islamist extremists and that foreign clerics teaching in Sri Lanka illegally will be expelled.
Sri Lanka’s churches remained shut Sunday forcing Christians to say prayers of grief in private over the Easter suicide attacks that the country’s Roman Catholic leader called "an insult to humanity".
Fearing a repeat of the Easter Sunday bombings of churches and hotels in which 253 people died, the Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, held a private mass after cancelling all public services. Amidst heavy security imposed across the country, a vigil was also held outside St Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo at 8:45 am, the moment the bomber struck the church, killing dozens ofworshippers.
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