Colombo, Former Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Friday moved the Supreme Court seeking protection from arrest under anti-terrorism laws in connection with the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed nearly 270 people.
The appeal comes after the Court of Appeal dismissed Rajapaksa's writ petition on October 1 without a hearing. That petition had sought an order preventing the police's Criminal Investigation Department from arresting him.
In June, the Colombo Fort Magistrate's Court imposed an overseas travel ban on the 77-year-old former leader, a move seen as a possible precursor to his arrest over the ongoing investigation.
Rajapaksa, who served as president from 2019 until he was forced to step down amid mass anti-government protests in mid-2022, subsequently approached the Court of Appeal seeking protection from arrest.
His legal team argued that there were no reasonable grounds to impose the travel ban on him regarding the Easter Sunday probe. Meanwhile, the state informed the court that it could not provide any undertaking that Rajapaksa would be spared from arrest.
In September, a Sri Lankan court found 15 people guilty of involvement in the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks and sentenced each of them to more than 200 years in prison.
Nine suicide bombers belonging to the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat, linked to ISIS, carried out coordinated attacks on three Catholic churches and three luxury hotels on April 21, 2019, killing nearly 270 people, including 11 Indians, and injuring over 500.
In July, former police chief Pujith Jayasundera and Hemasiri Fernando, the top bureaucrat in the Defence Ministry at the time, were sentenced to death after being found guilty of criminal dereliction of duty for failing to act on prior intelligence that could have prevented the tragedies.
Additionally, Rajapaksa's wife, Shiranthi Rajapaksa, was arrested on Wednesday in a corruption case for allegedly misusing 10 million rupees in public funds. The country's anti-graft authority also detained a former foreign minister and a former state bank chief in separate proceedings, while his nephew Namal Rajapaksa has remained in remand since early September over a separate corruption case.