By M.R. Narayan Swamy
Doctors are doing everything they can to keep Sri Lanka’s former intelligence chief Suresh Sallay alive, his wife said on Monday, as the man spent his ninth day in a Colombo hospital after launching an indefinite hunger strike.
“He is extremely weak,” Manori Sallay told Jaffna Monitor after visiting him. “All the doctors are going all out to keep him alive.”
The former head of the State Intelligence Service (SIS), who was arrested in February on charges of conspiring with Islamist militants to carry out the 2019 Easter bombings, has undergone surgery to remove pus from his right hand.
According to his wife, Manori, both of his hands became swollen due to an infection and turned red. Sallay, who has dismissed the allegations against him as fabricated, also developed a fever.
The surgery, though minor otherwise, “itself made Suresh very weak”, she said. “He felt slightly better today.”
However, Sallay still finds it difficult to sit up and talk even when family members visit him at the government-run National Hospital, where he was taken on June 7, two days after starting a hunger strike in protest against what he and his family said was torture in detention.
The government has repeatedly insisted that he was not tortured. But it has not explained how and why his health deteriorated sharply after just two nights of fasting.
“Suresh struggles to breathe,” his wife said. “He just cannot talk at length, even if he wants to. It is all very painful for all of us.”
A Sri Lankan Muslim alleged while seeking asylum in Switzerland in late 2019 that Sallay, a career intelligence officer, plotted with Islamists to bomb churches and hotels on Easter day in 2019, killing over 600 people and injuring hundreds.
The dead included foreigners. The massacre was claimed by the Islamic State and executed by its Sri Lankan affiliate.
The allegation is that Sallay wanted to create a fear psychosis so that former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, with whom he was close, could win the next presidential battle.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa did become president following the election held months later. He promptly appointed Sallay as head of the State Intelligence Service (SIS), Sri Lanka’s main intelligence agency
Those close to Sallay say the aim of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) government is to ultimately arrest Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose presidency ended abruptly in 2022 in the wake of the country’s economic collapse.
While the authorities have now allowed Manori as well as their son and daughter to visit Sallay daily for 15 minutes, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has denied similar permission to his lawyer.
A June 13 communication from CID Director Shani Abeysekara said Sallay required “continuous mental rest” and so should not be disturbed by other visitors, including his legal representatives.
The CID statement, however, appeared to contradict Additional Solicitor General Dileepa Peeris, who had told the court that the former spymaster was putting on an “Oscar-worthy performance” by feigning mental trauma.
Asked about the CID communication, Manori said: “Well, that does prove that they have mentally tortured Suresh and that he needs rest.”
On June 14, Manori questioned the justification offered to deny legal access to her husband in hospital.
She said in a communication to the CID Director that her husband went on hunger strike due to “a direct consequence of the physical, psychological, and emotional suffering he has endured whilst under the custody and control of officers attached to the Crime Investigation Department.
“Consequently, the responsibility for ensuring his safety, dignity, and well-being rests squarely upon your office,” she wrote.
Late last week, the Sallays’ daughter finally saw her father in the hospital’s isolation row for the first time after 105 days. Manori said the daughter had been traumatised by his condition, constantly worrying that he would die.
Since his admission in hospital, Sallay, detained under the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), has continued his hunger strike but has been put on saline.
Government ministers claim they have enough evidence to back the charges against Sallay. This claim has been debunked by not just the former SIS chief but also some of his colleagues.
A section of Sinhalese Buddhist politicians has come out openly in Sallay’s support, saying the government had relied on spurious charges to cause agony to a man who led a covert war against the once powerful Tamil Tigers.
