By M.R. Narayan Swamy
Sri Lanka’s former intelligence chief Suresh Sallay, detailed for alleged links with Islamists who unleashed the Easter bombings in 2019, refuses to give up his indefinite hunger strike or return to CID custody, which he dubs a “hellhole”.
Sallay made this clear to his lawyer, who called on him at the National Hospital in Colombo, where he was admitted on June 7, two days after he launched a fast in protest against his degrading treatment, his wife Manori said on Tuesday.
“Suresh said he would rather die than go back to that hellhole,” she said over the telephone, referring to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) cell where Sallay had been held since his arrest in February under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).
Manori, who visits her husband daily, said the family had also been urging Sallay, the former head of the State Intelligence Service (SIS), the country’s main intelligence agency, to end his hunger strike.
“’Please stop this fast, Suresh, I keep telling him,” she said. “We tell him that he needs to live to fight this case. But he won’t give up. He has told us too.”
Wednesday is the 11th day of Sallay’s hunger strike, during which he has been fed mostly saline after reaching the government-run hospital.
Sallay was taken into custody on allegations by a Sri Lankan Muslim known as Azad Maulana, and not proved in any court of law, that the officer had prodded the Islamists to rain terror on Easter day in 2019.
Some in the government and the Catholic clergy have dubbed Sallay the “mastermind” of the bombings in churches and hotels that day, which killed more than 260 people and wounded hundreds. The dead included foreigners.
Sallay has denied the accusations as false and said he was attending a military course in India when he was supposedly meeting leaders of the Sri Lankan affiliate of the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the bloody attacks.
A day earlier, the CID admitted for the first time that its personnel had indeed stripped Sallay naked in custody and subjected him to a deeply invasive physical search.
A CID official made the submission to the Human Rights Commission, which is investigating allegations that Sallay was a victim of high-handed treatment at the hands of his captors.
Sallay has alleged that he was both physically and psychologically tortured while in custody. Government leaders had denied the charge.
The CID officer, however, acknowledged that the retired spymaster had been stripped in front of other prisoners. The incident reportedly occurred in March.
“They were denying even this earlier,” Manori said.
The CID official told the rights body that stripping and invasive searches were done randomly and on a regular basis. “This is done for the safety of the people in custody,” the official added.
The official also insisted that, contrary to allegations, Sallay had been provided with good-quality food, including eggs and chicken.
Sallay and his family, however, maintain that he was often served stale food and that, on June 5, he was given a dinner of rice and radish curry on a piece of paper rather than on a plate, prompting him to begin a hunger strike.
When the rights official sought to see the CCTV cameras installed in the wing where Sallay had been detained, the CID officer said they had been programmed in such a way that they would automatically rewrite every 24 days.
This means incidents alleged to have happened even two months earlier would not be available for viewing by anyone, including the judiciary.
Manori said the good news was that Sallay’s wound on his hand was healing after surgery and that the swelling in both arms had gone down.
“Otherwise, he remains weak,” she said. “He finds it difficult to sit up and talk to us. At times, he finds it difficult to breathe.”
Meanwhile, Manori has urged the Catholic clergy in Sri Lanka to stop spreading the narrative, not based on any evidence that her husband had masterminded the Easter bombings in Colombo and elsewhere.
In an open letter to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Sri Lanka, she said: “We appeal to your Lordships, as the shepherds of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka, to reflect upon whether continued public assertions identifying my husband as the alleged ‘mastermind’ before the conclusion of judicial proceedings are consistent with the Church’s enduring commitment to justice, truth, charity, mercy, and the presumption of innocence.
“We humbly ask that those who possess moral authority (to) refrain from making public pronouncements that may prejudice pending judicial proceedings or contribute to the public condemnation of individuals who have not been convicted by a court of law.”
The letter specifically named Father Jude Rohan Silva and Father Cyril Gamini Fernando, saying they had been repeating allegations first made by Azad Maulana, a Sri Lankan who sought asylum in Switzerland. Maulana fled Sri Lanka after the Easter attacks and has refused to return.
