Sri Lanka’s ex-police chief sentenced to death for negligence in bombings that killed more than 260

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — A Sri Lankan court on Friday sentenced former Police Chief Pujith Jayasundara to death after finding him guilty of criminal negligence that allowed Islamic State-inspired bomb attacks on Easter Sunday in 2019, killing more than 260 people.

A death penalty in Sri Lanka typically means life in prison because the country has had an informal moratorium on executions since 1976. Current President Anura Kumara Dissanayake supports maintaining the moratorium.

The near-simultaneous bombings in 2019 were carried out at three tourist hotels and three churches — two of them Catholic and one Protest — and killed 42 foreigners. A parliamentary committee found that police and intelligence officials failed to act on repeated intelligence warnings of the attacks.

Jayasundara has the right to appeal Friday’s verdict by the three-member High Court bench.

The court was to deliver another ruling later Friday on Hemasiri Fernando, former secretary to the Defense Ministry, on the same charge.

Two Sri Lanka-based Islamic militant groups were accused of carrying out the bombings, and none of those believed to have been directly involved are living. Separate trials are taking place for people allegedly connected with the perpetrators.

Sri Lanka’s Catholic Church has claimed that those identified so far as perpetrators are not the masterminds behind the bombings, and that there was a bigger conspiracy behind the attacks.