COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s president has told his cabinet that he will not cooperate with a parliamentary investigation into security lapses leading to the Easter suicide bombings, official sources said Saturday.
Maithripala Sirisena summoned an emergency meeting of his cabinet on Friday night to oppose the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) probing the April 21 attacks that killed 258 people and wounded nearly 500.
A ministerial source told AFP Sirisena has refused to allow any police, military or intelligence personnel to testify before the committee.
“The cabinet meeting ended inconclusively,” the source said on condition of anonymity. “The government did not agree to suspend the PSC either.”
Sirisena’s office did not comment on the outcome of the heated cabinet meeting, but said the president had told senior police officers on Friday that he will not allow any serving officer to testify before the PSC.
Last week, Sirisena’s intelligence chief El-Sisira Mendis told the committee that the president had failed to hold regular security review meetings to assess the potential threat from radicals.
Halfway through his testimony, the live telecast of the proceedings were stopped on Sirisena’s orders, official sources said.
Sirisena’s defense secretary and police chief have suggested that the president, who is also the minister of Defense and Law and Order, did not follow proper protocols in dealing with intelligence reports, including advance warnings about the April 21 bombings.
Sirisena has repeatedly denied he was aware of an impending threat.
A local militant organization and the Daesh group claimed responsibility for the attacks against three churches and three luxury hotels.
Sirisena said last week that he had met with the national police chief and his top brass 13 days before the Easter Sunday attacks but no officer had raised the warnings which had been relayed by India.
Official sources said New Delhi had provided details of planned attacks based on information from a militant in Indian custody.
The government has admitted there were intelligence failures before the attacks, in which 45 foreign nationals died.
Sirisena subsequently suspended police chief Pujith Jayasundara and dismissed his top defense official Hemasiri Fernando.
Sri Lanka has been under a state of emergency since the attacks.
Sri Lanka president vows to block Easter attacks probe
Sri Lanka president vows to block Easter attacks probe
- Maithripala Sirisena summoned an emergency meeting of his cabinet on Friday night to oppose the committee probing the April 21 attacks
- Sirisena has refused to allow any police, military or intelligence personnel to testify before the committee
Philippines struggles to evacuate nationals from Middle East as attacks escalate across region
- Over 1,400 Philippine nationals in Middle East have requested for repatriation
- Filipinos are told to shelter in place, follow host government’s advice on situation
MANILA: The Philippines is in talks to evacuate its nationals from across the Middle East, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Tuesday, as an increasing number of Filipinos are seeking to leave amid growing destruction from US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran’s counterstrikes against US bases in Gulf countries.
More than 2.4 million Filipinos live and work in the Middle East, where tensions have been high since Saturday, after coordinated US-Israel strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian officials.
Tehran responded by targeting US military bases in Gulf countries, and violence has been widening across the region.
Evacuating Philippine nationals across the region is not yet possible, Marcos said, as countries closed their airspace, leading to airport shutdowns and the cancellation of thousands of flights throughout the Middle East.
“For now, we are depending on the advice that will be given to us by the local authorities in the place where our nationals — where our people — are,” Marcos told reporters in Manila on Tuesday.
The Philippine government has received requests for repatriation from more than 1,400 Filipino nationals in various Middle Eastern countries, including 872 from the UAE and almost 300 from Israel. Similar requests have also been made by Filipinos in Iran, Bahrain and Jordan.
“Right now, the most dangerous area for our people right now would be Israel as attacks there are continuous,” Marcos said.
“The problem now is that no planes are flying and airports are being hit. That’s why the situation is very fluid, our assessment is that it may be too dangerous to mount flights.
“Even if we could charter an aircraft, we cannot do anything because number one, the airports are closed. They are all no-fly zones.”
As the Philippine government prepares for multiple scenarios, officials have secured buses and other vehicles for possible evacuation by land.
Filipinos in “danger areas” have been moved to a safer place, Marcos said, citing the targeting of Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura oil refinery by Iranian drones on Monday morning.
“But essentially our advice to them is shelter in place and follow the host government’s advice … For now it’s extremely difficult to enter or exit the region because the only aircraft flying are fighter jets and drones, and missiles.
“That’s why it is not a place that you would want to put in a civilian aircraft to take out our nationals,” he said.
“But again, as I said, the situation is changing by the minute, by the hour. We just have to be in very good and close contact with the local authorities.”
