-By: Invetigative Reporter
(Lanka-e-News -19.April.2025, 11.40 PM)
It was a warm afternoon in Kuala Lumpur, the kind that smells of diesel, curry puffs, and conspiracy. Somewhere between the Petronas Towers and a discreet Hawala agent’s apartment, a ghost transaction took place — clean on the outside, murky on the inside. The sender? A jewellery-loving Sri Lankan émigré in Switzerland, known to be a close associate of none other than Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan — better known to all and sundry as Pillayan. The recipient? The now-not-so-invisible man behind Sri Lanka’s military intelligence cult: Major General Suresh Saleh.
Now let’s get to the money trail that leads not just to Kuala Lumpur, but to a blast heard across Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday 2019 — and a plot thick enough to make even John le Carré ask for subtitles.
Switzerland may be neutral, but its bank accounts are anything but. According to evidence now floating in both Colombo and Geneva, an associate of Pillayan — who runs a seemingly innocent jewellery front in Zurich — allegedly used informal Hawala channels to transfer large sums to Suresh Saleh’s contacts in Malaysia in 2017 and 2018.
For legal reasons, we’ll withhold names. But for poetic justice, we’ll describe them: one man with a beard trimmed like a UN diplomat, another with gold rings heavy enough to buy a small island in the Maldives.
This wasn’t just chump change. We’re talking about over USD 20,000 — transferred in untraceable Hawala payments through underground money agents in Malaysia, all in cash, all off-the-books, and all seemingly for the “logistical upkeep” of one Mohamed Zaharan Hashim, who, spoiler alert, didn’t use the money to buy textbooks.
Zaharan Hashim, leader of the NTJ (National Thowheeth Jama'ath), wasn’t a lone radical who stumbled across an ISIS video on 4G. According to two witnesses now under tight protection (and tighter NDAs), Zaharan was not only hand-delivered money by Saleh’s operatives in Malaysia, but also mentored. Yes — mentored.
Not by imams. But by intelligence officers.
The witnesses claim that during meetings arranged in Kuala Lumpur, Saleh personally showed Zaharan videos of ISIS suicide bombings, telling him they were "rehearsals." Rehearsals for what? The grand Easter finale — that was never about religion, but regime change.
The plot, it seems, wasn’t orchestrated by religious fanatics but by a political fanatic — in uniform.
Saleh allegedly sold the idea to his military cult (and parts of the rogue intelligence establishment) that a staged Islamic terrorist attack would serve two purposes:
Distract Western attention away from the UN investigations into Sri Lanka’s war crimes during the 2009 conflict with the LTTE. Because what’s better than hiding a war crime? Starting a new one.
Engineer chaos and mass fear before the 2019 presidential election — chaos that only a “strongman” like Gotabaya Rajapaksa could “restore order” from. Enter Gota, stage hard right.
This wasn’t just theatre. This was war choreography.
If Saleh was the puppeteer, Sajjad Masum — a known intermediary for Gulf-based hawala networks — was the purse.
Our sources suggest multiple transactions through Sajjad’s channel, with codename “Gota Beer” (yes, really), sent from Dubai to Kuala Lumpur, destined for Saleh’s handlers. At least two of these transactions reportedly correspond to Zaheeran’s known travel dates to Malaysia and Indonesia.
Masum, when contacted, claimed he was “too busy managing a shisha lounge in Qatar” to comment. We bet he was.
But wait — the rabbit hole gets deeper. Guess who was the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in Malaysia at the time? MJM Musammil, a man with a name as confusing as his loyalties.
Musammil — a political appointee with more friends in Colombo casinos than consulates — allegedly turned a blind eye to Saleh’s financial operations in Kuala Lumpur. Worse, he is linked to a shady Sri Lankan expat with ties to human smuggling, who falsely claimed to be a UN peacekeeper and facilitated Zaharan’s forged travel documents.
That’s right. Even the passport was fake. But the explosion? Tragically, all too real.
Now here’s the juicy part. All of this allegedly happened without the knowledge of then-Army Commander Mahesh Senanayake or Military Intelligence Director Brigadier Suresh Kodituwakku.
Both officers, now retired, have privately expressed shock at the scale of the operation and the betrayal by Saleh, whom they describe as “a rogue unit within a rogue system.”
In other words, even within the chaos that is Sri Lanka’s post-war intelligence apparatus, Saleh went off-script. He didn’t just operate in the shadows. He created a whole new darkness.
The Swiss are sniffing. The Malaysians are mumbling. The Sri Lankans? Still doing pujas and pointing fingers at Islamists.
But the evidence is stacking.
Witnesses.
Hawala transactions.
Travel records.
Video mentorship sessions.
Jewellery-business fronts in Zurich.
Diplomatic silence from Colombo.
If the government is serious about justice — not just for the 270 lives lost on Easter Sunday, but for the soul of a country held hostage by military misadventures and Machiavellian politics — there is no choice.
Suresh Saleh must be questioned. Thoroughly. Publicly. Fearlessly.
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by (2025-04-20 18:25:04)
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