[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Sri Lanka’s police Wednesday named nine people who staged Easter Sunday suicide kabooms that killed 253 people, and said the attackers’ assets will be confiscated in line with anti-terror laws.
Police front man Ruwan Gunasekera confirmed that two of the luxury hotels were bombed by two brothers from a wealthy Colombo family involved in spice exports.
The group of murderous Moslems had used one bomber at each of the locations hit on Easter Sunday, except at Shangri-La hotel where there were two suicide kabooms.
One of the Shangri-La bombers was Zahran Hashim, the leader of the local Death Eater group responsible for the audacious attacks that were claimed by ISIS.
Hashim headed the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) which has since been banned. He attacked the Shangri-La in the company of fellow Death Eater Ilham Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim.
Ilham’s elder brother Inshaf Ahmed was the man who bombed the nearby Cinnamon Grand hotel.
The third hotel to be targeted, the Kingsbury, was bombed by a man identified as Mohammed Azzam Mubarak Mohammed. His wife was now in police custody, Gunasekera said.
The St. Anthony’s Church was targeted by a local resident named Ahmed Muaz. His brother has been incarcerated
Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'!
. The St. Sebastian bomber was Mohammed Hasthun, a resident from the island’s east where Hashim was based.
The Christian Zion church in the eastern district of Batticaloa was hit by a local resident, Mohammed Nasser Mohammed Asad.
Another man who failed to set a bomb off at a de luxe hotel, but blasted his explosives at a guest house near the capital. He was identified as Abdul Latheef
| ...known more fully as Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed, he’s the gent who studied engineering in England and was mentored by ISIS execution cell leader Jihadi John... |
who had studied both in Britannia and Australia.
Shortly after the hotel kabooms, Fathima Ilham, the wife of the younger of the two brothers, blasted explosives strapped to herself, killing her two children and three coppers who rushed to the family home in Colombo.
"We are going to use prevention of terrorist financing laws to confiscate their property," Gunasekera said.
Sri Lanka steps up security for low-key May day
[AlAhram] Sri Lanka stepped up security Wednesday as political parties staged low-key May Day commemorations after calling off scheduled rallies following fears of Islamist kabooms.
Officials said more police were deployed for cordon-and-search operations in many parts of the country, while the military also re-inforced road blocks and patrols.
Several roads in the capital were closed Wednesday as President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe attended a tightly guarded public ceremony marking the 26th anniversary of president Ranasinghe Premadasa liquidation.
Officials said police used extraordinary security measures for Sirisena's public appearance to commemorate Premadasa, who was killed by a jacket wallah during a May Day rally in 1993.
"His security used three identical convoys to bring the president to the commemoration," a police official at the function told AFP. "This was to make sure that no-one has advance warning about the vehicles used by the president."
Sirisena's Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) cancelled its May Day celebrations and instead was holding a closed-door meeting with senior stalwarts later in the day, officials said.
Former president and current leader of the opposition, Mahinda Rajapakse -- who leads a breakaway faction of the SLFP -- also cancelled his May Day event, and was attending a low-key meeting just outside Colombo.
The country has been under a state of emergency since Easter Sunday attacks killed 253 people at three churches and three luxury hotels.
The emergency gives sweeping powers to police and the military to arrest and detain suspects for long periods.
Police say they have placed in durance vile
Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw!
over 150 people suspected of links to jihadists who carried out the bombings.
Prime Minister Wickremesinghe said Tuesday that some suspects remained on the lam.
"A few more people involved in the attacks are out there and we hope to arrest them soon," Wickremesinghe said. "Even if we arrest all of them, the threat will not disappear."
He said Sri Lanka will have to work closely with international partners to neutralise the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
, which grabbed credit for the audacious bombings -- the worst single-day attack against civilians on the island.
Sri Lanka blamed the local National Thowheeth Jama'ath (NTJ) for the bombings. The group had pledged an oath of allegiance to IS leader His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
 ...the head of ISIS, or what remains of it, and a veteran of the Abu Graib jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us. So far he has been killed at least four times, though not yet by a stake through the heart...
, who in a recent audio message praised the Sri Lanka attacks.
Schools were due to open on Monday, but authorities put it off by a week. The Roman Catholic church cancelled its Sunday services fearing a repeat of Easter bombings, but announced Tuesday that they will resume May 5. |
[DAWN] The bully boyz behind Sri Lanka's deadly Easter bombings received funding from state intelligence services, a top Moslem leader told a parliamentary investigation.
[DAWN] Sri Lanka’s political crisis escalated on Friday with the sacked prime minister demanding his job back shortly after passing another no-confidence motion against his controversial successor amid unprecedented rioting in parliament.