Former president must pay victims of 2019 bombings

COLOMBO, SRI LANKA >> Sri Lanka's top court on Thursday ordered the country's former president and several of his senior officials to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation to the families of the victims of terrorist attacks on Easter Sunday in 2019, a small victory in an island nation that has long suffered from a culture of rampant impunity.

The Supreme Court, ruling on a petition filed by families of the victims as well as church leaders and activists, said Maithripala Sirisena, the president of Sri Lanka from 2015 to 2019, and his top security officials had failed to prevent the carnage despite detailed intelligence reports suggesting such attacks had been imminent.

A series of coordinated suicide attacks by Islamic State-inspired assailants ripped through several churches and hotels in and around the capital, Colombo, killing more than 200 people. The attacks shattered a decade of relative peace in Sri Lanka, which was trying to emerge from a long, scarring civil war.

The devastating security breach was made possible by a coalition government paralyzed by infighting among its leaders. After the attacks, the crucial tourism sector dried up, and anti-Muslim mob violence spread across the country. The Easter Sunday carnage proved to be the first in a cascade of blows that left the island nation in the worst economic crisis in its recent history.

Saman Nandana Sirimanne, one of the petitioners, said that although the ruling brought some solace, it had fallen short of a jail term for the officials, which was what he was hoping for.