TIL Desk/World/Colombo/ Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that the government had known that Sri Lankan nationals who had joined the Islamic State had returned to the country, but they could not be arrested as joining a foreign terrorist organisation is not against the law.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the Easter terror attacks on three Catholic churches and three luxury hotels that claimed 253 lives but the government has blamed a local Islamist extremist group National Tawheed Jamath (NTJ) for the bombings.
“We knew they went to Syria…But in our country, to go abroad and return or to take part in a foreign armed uprising is not an offence here,” Wickremesinghe told. “We have no laws which enable us to take into custody people who join foreign terrorist groups. We can take those who are, who belong to terrorist groups operating in Sri Lanka,” he was quoted as saying.
Facing public criticism for not acting against Islamist extremist groups in the island nation, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe said some of the suspected attackers responsible for the Easter bombings were being monitored by the country’s intelligence services. But authorities did not have “sufficient” evidence to place the suspected attackers in custody prior to the attacks, he said.
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