-By A LeN Special Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -29.April.2025, 11.10 PM) There are few men in Sri Lanka who can utter a sentence with such smug certainty that the entire nation instinctively knows he’s bluffing. But then, there is only one Ranil Wickremesinghe. The man who has mastered the art of clinging onto power without clinging onto facts.
This week, the President-Prime-Minister-Lord-Keeper-of-the-Chaotic-Land, Ranil Wickremesinghe, delivered a remarkable sermon to the Sri Lankan public. He warned, eyes squinting in diplomatic concern, that “rejecting the FBI’s findings on the Easter Sunday attacks may anger none other than Donald J. Trump.”
Yes, Donald Trump. The same man who referred to the FBI as the “enemy within,” who called their Russia investigation a “witch hunt,” and whose golf course was raided by agents hunting for classified documents stuffed between boxes of golf balls and tanning lotion. That Donald Trump, the arch-nemesis of the FBI, is apparently going to wake up, hear that Colombo didn’t like the FBI’s Easter report, and—presumably mid-hamburger—throw a tantrum.
Let’s pause here.
Ranil—whose political instincts are finely tuned to the winds of Washington, Brussels, or any foreign embassy that’ll take his calls—has now decided that Trump, a man known for flipping opinions faster than a Colombo tuk-tuk driver switches lanes, will come out guns blazing to defend the honor of the FBI.
How quaint.
Even more curious is that this FBI report he clutches like a holy relic is now being touted as the final word on the Easter Sunday attacks. The same attacks that killed over 270 innocent people. The same attacks that, to this day, remain shrouded in suspicion, murk, and more plot twists than a Teledrama on Swarnavahini.
According to Ranil, the FBI has spoken: Zaheeran Hashim was the mastermind. Case closed. Move along, citizens.
But here’s the problem—just about everyone else, including the Catholic Church, isn’t buying it.
Let’s examine what this sacred FBI document really is. Produced in the aftermath of the attacks, based on intelligence shared at the time, and allegedly peppered with “evidence” handed over by a familiar face in Sri Lanka’s counter-terrorism circus: Professor Rohan Gunaratna. A man whose love affair with microphones is rivaled only by his devotion to questionable conclusions.
Gunaratna, who has never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t want to dance with, had reportedly fed the FBI a hearty serving of “analysis” pointing to Zaheeran as the lone evil genius. Forget the suspicious intelligence lapses, the conveniently pulled-out STF guards, or the curious mobility of military informants just before the bombings. None of that, says Gunaratna, is important.
And now Ranil, parroting the FBI’s dated gospel, wants Sri Lanka to fall in line. He warns that questioning it is tantamount to heresy—and worse, could offend the Great Orange Emperor of Florida.
But here’s a fun twist: Donald Trump has repeatedly and publicly trashed the FBI. During and after his presidency, he referred to the Bureau as a tool of political persecution. He branded FBI Director Christopher Wray as disloyal. He even implied that the Bureau had fabricated charges against him in multiple investigations.
So the idea that Trump—who wouldn’t trust the FBI to guard a hotdog stand—is going to leap to its defense over a Sri Lankan terror report he’s never read, is as absurd as expecting Mahinda Rajapaksa to win a vegan cooking contest.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka has not been shy. They have stood tall, firm, and furious. From Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith to the priests who held mass for the dead and the disappeared, their claim is unrelenting: Zaheeran was not the true mastermind. The attack was orchestrated by forces within the state.
And not just any forces.
They name Suresh Saleh, former head of military intelligence. They whisper about Pillayan, a man whose post-war political resurrection has been one of the darker jokes of Sri Lanka’s democracy. They speak of a professor, curiously unnamed in public, but known in intelligence circles, who helped choreograph the narrative before the first bomb even went off.
Let’s not forget that several intelligence reports, testimony, and investigative journalism (from both domestic and international sources) indicate that the bombers were being watched, followed, and in some cases, even protected—right up to the moment they exploded.
Some reports allege that military intelligence had moles embedded within the group, and rather than stop the attacks, allowed them to proceed, conveniently aligning with the Rajapaksa family’s desperate desire to return to power after electoral humiliation.
Ranil, naturally, ignores all this. Instead, he calls for blind acceptance of the FBI’s scripture.
Ranil has always suffered from what some have called “Diplomatic Delusion Disorder.” It’s a curious condition where the afflicted believes every utterance must please foreign powers—often at the expense of domestic truth.
In this case, he hopes that his endorsement of the FBI report will score points with Washington. But alas, not even the US government is as enthusiastic about that document as he is. No other Western intelligence agency has come forward to say: “Yes, we fully endorse the FBI’s finding.”
In fact, there are whisperings in diplomatic corridors that the report was thin, hastily compiled, and based on “second-hand” intelligence provided by Sri Lankan sources with political motives. Translation: Rohan Gunaratna and company.
And if Gunaratna is your main source, you might as well get your intelligence from the back of a cereal box.
Let us also address another crucial point. Ranil insists the FBI’s report must be respected because “no court has challenged it.”
Well, of course not. It hasn’t been tested in court. It hasn’t been put through adversarial scrutiny. The FBI didn’t file charges in a US court. Instead, they quietly passed on their findings, and Colombo’s bureaucracy did what it does best: filed it, misused it, and protected the usual suspects.
The real reason the report has never seen a court is because if it did, it would unravel faster than a budget speech in parliament. Questions would be asked. Witnesses would be cross-examined. Chain of custody would be probed. And those who waved it around like divine prophecy—like Ranil—would be left looking very foolish.
And now we come to the punchline.
By invoking Trump, Ranil has created a masterpiece of political theatre. A man who himself may soon face jail time thanks to the FBI is being dragged in as a moral compass for Sri Lanka.
Imagine President Trump at Mar-a-Lago being told: “Sir, Sri Lanka doesn’t believe the FBI report on the 2019 Easter attacks.”
Trump, halfway through a Diet Coke, might grunt: “Good. Neither do I. Bunch of liars.”
Then he’d go back to yelling at CNN.
Ranil’s problem isn’t just his selective reading of intelligence reports. It’s his selective memory.
This is the man who, during the Yahapalanaya government, sat atop the very intelligence apparatus that received direct prior warnings about the Easter attacks. He was told. His intelligence units were told. So were the police.
And they did… nothing.
Now, five years later, Ranil wants to rewrite history. He wants to declare the FBI as the unimpeachable oracle. He wants to frame doubters—including victims’ families, priests, and opposition MPs—as conspiracy theorists.
But the facts are not on his side. The people are not on his side. And even Donald Trump is not on his side.
If Ranil Wickremesinghe believes that parroting a shaky FBI document will shut down the demand for truth and accountability, he is mistaken. This is not a budget debate he can bluff his way through. This is about justice for nearly 300 souls who died in cold blood.
And no amount of political posturing, foreign name-dropping, or Gunaratna fairy tales will erase that.
By A LeN Special Correspondent
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by (2025-04-29 18:05:38)
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