Sri Lanka’s Home Affairs Minister Vajira Abeywardena revealed Sunday that the country had deported 200 Islamic clerics in the wake of the Easter Sunday jihadist attacks against Christians over concerns they had the potential to radicalize locals.
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Muslim terrorists killed 257 people on Easter Sunday in suicide bombings targeting three churches and three hotels where Christians were enjoying an Easter brunch. Sri Lankan authorities initially blamed the attacks on a domestic group known as National Thawheed Jama’ath (NTJ), but the Islamic State later took credit for the killings, releasing video footage of the founder of NTJ pledging allegiance to Islamic State “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Ensuring investigations revealed that foreign intelligence services had warned Sri Lankan officials of the attack weeks before, but no agency took action to prevent it. Authorities have seen been publicizing measures they have taken to ensure it has not happened again, including banning Islamic face veils, raiding mosques, and deporting questionable clerics.
The week after the bombings, local media revealed that 11 mosques near the NTJ headquarters outside of Colombo were known as “fundamentalist” or Wahhabist, referring to a radical Saudi strain of Islam.
“Considering the current situation in the country, we have reviewed the visas system and took a decision to tighten visa restrictions for religious teachers,” Abeywardena told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday, confirming that Colombo had deported 600 people for potential ties to jihad, 200 clerics among them. He said that none of those expelled had broken the law to enter the country but did have expired visas, which the government chose not to renew. While he did not specify the nationalities of those removed, local media reported that many came from neighboring India and Pakistan, as well as Muslim countries like Bangladesh and the Maldives.
“There are religious institutions which have been getting down foreign preachers for decades,” he explained. “We have no issues with them, but there are some which mushroomed recently. We will pay more attention to them.”
Sri Lanka is a majority Buddhist country that came out of a decades-long civil war between Buddhists and Hindus only a decade ago. Christians and Muslims have long been minorities of comparable size that attract little attention from authorities, making the island nation a soft target for groups like the Islamic State.
The Sri Lankan news outlet Ada Derana reported Sunday that the head of NTJ, Mohamed Zahran Hashim, had openly established a terrorist training camp near his mosque. Police found a ten-acre estate in Kattankudy, home to a significant Muslim population and the NTJ’s headquarters, where they say Zahran and his followers experimented with explosives. The estate next to that land, Ada Derana noted, was also owned by a man recently arrested in Saudi Arabia, identified as a cousin of Zahran’s.
Dozens of children are shown kneeling in a circle at Sunday School before they are allowed to go outside for a break ahead of the main mass at 9amRelatives of a blast victim grieve outside a morgue in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sunday, April 21, 2019. More than hundred were killed and hundreds more hospitalized with injuries from eight blasts that rocked churches and hotels in and just outside of Sri Lanka’s capital on Easter Sunday, officials said, the worst violence to hit the South Asian country since its civil war ended a decade ago. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
The Sri Lankan news agency also reported Monday that new evidence suggested Saudi Arabia had warned Sri Lankan officials of an imminent attack about five days before Easter. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, members of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s cabinet accused President Maithripala Sirisena of having evidence of a jihadist attack plot and not informing them about it. The cabinet members circulated a document they claimed came from Indian intelligence warning of an Easter Sunday plot. Zahran reportedly spent time in India recording jihadist sermons and uploading them to Youtube and Facebook.
Sirisena later claimed that his intelligence officials did not tell him of the alleged plot, either, and fired his police chief and defense secretary.
Sri Lankan police took a week to shut down the NTJ’s headquarters and raided the place just this weekend. Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror reported Sunday that police arrested a man at the location Sunday and found evidence that jihadists were using the location for “making bombs, testing them, target practice and other illegal activities.”
The person arrested during that raid told police that Mohamed Rilwan Hashim, the brother of the suspected mastermind of the Easter bombing, had trained with his brother and blew up his hand and face on one occasion in 2007, losing several fingers and eyesight in one eye. The Mirror reported that police confirmed through hospital records that the claim was true – a man came to the local hospital with wounds clearly caused by an improvised bomb, received treatment, and was allowed to leave without police being notified of the incident.
Sri Lanka is currently preparing for nationwide elections, which President Sirisena asserted Saturday would go on as planned despite the threat of jihadist attacks.
“Elections cannot be postponed, therefore before the elections, I will bring about stability and I will eradicate terrorism,” Sirisena said in remarks to Reuters. “We have already identified all active members of the group and it’s a case of now arresting them.”
Sirisena admitted that up to 30 individuals with ties to the attack were “still at large” as of Saturday, but insisted that there is no intelligence suggesting they are planning further suicide bombings and that police are working to swiftly take them off the streets.
Sirisena said he would schedule elections between November and December.
While investigations continue, Christians have been unable to return to Mass on Sunday or send their children to school. Catholic clergy canceled Mass for the last two weeks, televising the service and urging believers to tune in. Schools reopened on Monday, but turnout was reportedly extremely low. In one school, Ada Derana reported, only 50 of the 3,000 students enrolled showed up for their first day since the attacks.
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What you say MIGHT be true. HOWEVER, All of the Islamarealists WILL CHEER for the RIGHTEOUS ACT of the Sri Lanka government. They have set a GOOD PRECEDENCE!!!!!!!!!!
It’s not enough and it’s a waste of time because all these f’ing muslums were preaching and practicing was islam — in allah it’s bloody, violent glory.
How do we know how MSM will respond? Sounds like a good experiment to try. US is 14.5 times the size of Sri Lanka so that would be 8300 in total? Is my math right?
Citizen 1949
4 years ago
200 clerics is a good start, now make it so uncomfortable on the rest that they will leave on their own.
I think it’s unprecedented. I could be wrong, but I don’t recall anyone else sending this many ‘clerics’ packing? U.K. couldn’t or wouldn’t send that ONE loudmouth ‘cleric’ packing. I’m surprised that this isn’t bigger news. Certainly, the FakeNewsMedia has to be outraged? And, where’s the Pope? I’m sure he wouldn’t approve.
You’ve got that right, but Sri Lanka is in a crisis mode right now and they are forced to do something; even if it goes against the politically correct point of view. I just wish more political leaders would do what the Sri Lankans are doing. The world would be much better off.
Lee
4 years ago
I wish Israel and America would deport 200 Imam’s.For Starters…
Here’s a question for the peanut gallery. How many hours or minutes was the forth picture taken? If you can’t answer the question, then you haven’t the slightest clue as to what happens when a huge bomb explodes inside a building, a church.
Rick James
4 years ago
So Muslims kill and injure hundreds and Sri Lanka just deports some imams? You should work on deporting all Muslims and destroying their mosques. Let Muslims know they are merely guests in the country and if you kill your fellow citizens you pay the price.
Frankly Muslims deserve to be carpet-bombed and worse but in our age of political correctness we bow to Muslims even while they slaughter us. This is a menial gesture, they can do much more.
What Muslims understand, we should place 10 in front of a firing squad for every innocent Christian killed
Tamara Hussey-Mecklenburg
4 years ago
One day a bold nation will be smart enough to end legal and illegal migration to protect it’s own people.
Oh wait, they already do but that nation is too poor to get any media attention and my maternal grandfather was auditor general for that nation most of his adult life. Best friends of the former king.
Too bad no one notices them.
They chose self sufficiency as their economy of choice. Self sufficient extended family communities.
Poor but peaceful.
AlgorithmicAnalyst
4 years ago
Good start 🙂
patd
4 years ago
We need to expel all of the muslims from the USA too!!!!!!!!!!!!! Time to send the goat rapers back to their caves!!!!
Mohammed_Goldberg
4 years ago
They should have been expelled in body bags. They will just spread their hate elsewhere.
Trevor Fortune
4 years ago
“Islam must be purged of jihad, genocide, misogyny, creed apartheid and Jew-hatred.” NO. The world must be purged of islam once and for all.
ed
4 years ago
I hope we don’t see the headline, “200 ‘Sri Lankan’ men stopped by the US Border Patrol illegally crossing the Rio Grande” any time soon….
Alleged-Comment
4 years ago
Mouslems are deranged. They are the equivalent of Hollowood Zombies on your soil. When the SHTF your equally DERANGED leaders will release them on you.
Clem Jackson
4 years ago
Well said Suresh but how much evidence do we need to produce so those who control us in government take action to eradicate once and for all the notion that multiculturalism works, when clearly it does not work unless those coming to our countries want to come here because they want to live as we live. And those who’s religion and ideology is fundamentally against all of our values and existence must be prevented from coming to our countries in the first place.
Sri Lanks should remove all imams and remove all mosques, because unless you do this event will repeat itself sadly.
John Acord
4 years ago
Will It take another massacre to convince the Sri Lankan authorities that half measure will not work with Muslims? All must be deported if you wish to remain safe and secure.
Badger
4 years ago
‘Islam must be purged of jihad, genocide, misogyny, creed apartheid and Jew-hatred’
That is a message I’d expect from a simpleton or at the very least someone completely ignorant of what islam is. Islam cannot be purged because it is based on the word of God and is therefore immutable. I can’t believe Pam Geller wrote that.
It would be interesting to see how the author of that comment would go about making the koran ‘moderate.’ What passages would need to be removed or rewritten? It being the perfect book, would any attempts to edit it be blasphemy demanding the death penalty?
It’s a freakin’ fanstasy. If you purge islum of “jihad, genocide, misogyny, creed apartheid and Jew-hatred” what you get isn’t islum.
There is no peaceful solution to a Jew hating, fascist, violent, vile, death cult except eradication — for the good of humanity.
Ed Maher
4 years ago
They should expel ALL muslims and tear down their mosques!
Stephen Honig
4 years ago
I’d would have preferred their heads come off for retribution!
Laddyboy
4 years ago
Firstly; GOOD FOR YOU SRI LANKINS!!!!!!!
Second; ANY organization that teaches HATE, RAPE, SLAVERY and SLAUGHTER MUST BE EXPELLED FROM ANY COUNTRY.
THIRD: ANY organization that teaches NOT TO ASSIMILATE MUST BE EXPELLED.
Fourth; Any organization that teaches its adheres that “they are supreme and do not have to follow the nation’s laws where they happen to be MUST BE EXPELLED!!!!
Finally, I am praying for the families that have been hurt by these muslem THUGS. God Bless and HEAL you.
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