Harsha de Silva on the Bombings in Sri Lanka

HARSHA DE SILVA, SRI LANKA ECONOMIC REFORMS MINISTER: Well, it was a very sad, sad visit to St. Sebastian church earlier today. I spoke to the parish priest there and I spoke to many who were in the congregation earlier. 102 Catholics perished in that terrible, terrible suicide bomb attack there. I spoke to people outside, they were angry. I spoke to members of the local council, they were not happy with the government. I spoke to some opposition MPs who had gathered there. Of course, they had a lot of criticism. So all in all, it was a very, very kind of a sad visit on a gloomy Easter Monday.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: You know, you say people were not happy with the government. I’m sure that’s an understatement, Minister. It’s really hard to believe, it beggars belief in this age of terrorism that the deputy police chief sent a memo specifically talking about an alleged attempted suicide bomb plan, and that was 10 days before the attack, and your government has had to apologize for failing to act on it. Can you tell me why, why would the responsible people not have acted on it? What happened?

DE SILVA: I mean, that is the question. That is absolutely the question. It is not a failure of the intelligence service. They had the intel. They were collaborating with both local and foreign intel agencies. And we did receive information from overseas that something terrible was to happen. And like you said, a memo had been sent to the Ministry of Defense who then directed it to the inspector general of police who then sent it to various other people. So, it was not a failure of the intelligence apparatus. It was a failure of implementing what had to be implemented.

So, the question is, why was it not done? And also, the prime minister was unaware. He was kept in the dark. The acting, or rather, the State Minister for Defense was not aware. And the president was on a private visit overseas, and I would have expected that prime minister to have been well briefed, but that hadn’t happened either. So, there was a colossal failure.