Kiriella calls for parliamentary select committee

Leader of the House Lakshman Kiriella yesterday called for the appointment of a parliamentary select committee to look into the failure of communication of the prior warnings that were made by foreign intelligence on last Sunday’s terrorist attacks.

Minister Kiriella who was speaking during the emergency debate in Parliament yesterday that it is extremely important to look into as to why the warning made by foreign intelligence units were not communicated to relevant forces.

The Minister faulted the local intelligence units alleging that they should have informed the defence authorities through a telephone call rather than sending a letter.

“President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and even Cardinal Malclom Ranjith should have been informed prior to the Sunday attacks by the defence forces,” he said blaming the defence officials as well. He said even the service commanders have not been informed about the warnings.

“There would have been an invisible hand which prevented the defence authorities from taking action to prevent the attacks. Who is controlling them? Therefore it is appropriate to appoint a select committee to determine these manners,” he added.

Further Mr. Kiriella said the Peace Loving Moderate Muslims in Sri Lanka (PLMM) had informed the government to save Muslims from Thawheed Jama'at and to ban that organization in January 2014.

At the same time, he said pointing fingers at each other for the failures will not serve any purpose but it has to be determined as to what went wrong. (Yohan Perera and Ajitj Siriwardana)