The Suresh Sallay Narrative: From Counter-Terror Intelligence to Manufactured Conspiracy

 

 

 

The purpose of this article is not to defend an individual but to defend institutional logic, to decipher what went wrong and by whom, and to prevent judicial manipulation through politicized narrative framing. Even 30 years of LTTE terror and bloodshed did not result in over six reports and Presidential Commissions of Inquiry at taxpayers’ expense, as the Easter Sunday attacks have. Therefore, it is the right of every citizen to question why an attack that clearly reveals failures in monitoring extremist groups and failures in preventive action continues to be dragged through successive inquiries.

MANUFACTURED False Narrative being floated:

“Suresh Sallay had contact with Zahran, therefore he enabled the Easter attacks.”

 

This is strategic deception, built by:

• NGOs
• foreign-linked media
• regime-change actors
• ideological networks
• Islamist lobby groups
• LTTE-linked diaspora activists

 

Why this narrative is powerful:

Because people do not understand how intelligence agencies work and sensationalized stories are gullible to those ready to believe versions that fit into their line of thinking.

 

THE MOST CRITICAL FACT : SALLAY’S ACTUAL ROLE IN 2019

 

In 2019 – Suresh Sallay was NOT:

• SIS Head
• CID Head
• Military intelligence operational commander
• Counter-terror operational authority

 

He was:

Sri Lanka’s Defence Attaché in Malaysia and thereafter attending Defense Training in India.

 

Meaning:

• No command authority
• No operational control
• No decision-making authority
• No arrest powers
• No intelligence processing authority
• No domestic intelligence command

 

This alone collapses allegations that accuse him of instructing military or intel operatives:

• command responsibility
• negligence claims
• operational accountability

 

Legal liability arises only where formal command authority exists.
Moral speculation cannot replace jurisdictional responsibility.

In criminal law, liability also requires causal proximity and operational linkage.
Without direct command authority, documented instruction, or operational control, attribution collapses as a matter of law — not opinion.

 

CHAIN OF COMMAND — THE LEGAL FOUNDATION

Only those in the military will know the command chain flow – you cannot ask a man in military uniform to take action unless it comes directly from his superior.

 

This command chain is not discretionary — it is legally binding, operationally rigid, and universal across professional armed forces.

 

 

Stage	Responsible Entity
Data Collection	SIS
Collation & Analysis	SIS / CNI
Threat Assessment	CNI + IGP + Defence Ministry
Operational Decisions	IGP + CID + STF + Tri-Forces
Arrest / Disruption	CID + Police + STF
Tactical Action	Police + Military

 

Key Principle:

SIS CANNOT ARREST.
SIS CANNOT RAID.
SIS CANNOT DISRUPT.
SIS CAN ONLY INFORM.

 

So:

If intelligence existed —
Operational failure belongs to ACTION arms, not COLLECTION arms.

THE ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE    

 

Every intelligence agency in the world:

• infiltrates extremist groups
• runs informants
• cultivates radical assets for data
• embeds operatives
• manipulates extremist cells

 

This includes:

• CIA
• MI6
• Mossad
• RAW
• ISI
• ASIO
• DGSE
• FSB

 

Why?

Because:

You cannot neutralize a terror network from the outside.

You must penetrate it from within.

 

So:

Zahran being previously used as an intelligence asset:

• is NORMAL
• is STANDARD
• is ESSENTIAL
• is UNIVERSAL

Therefore:

Using:

“Zahran had intelligence links”

 

to imply:

“Therefore Sallay enabled terrorism”

 

is:

Either extreme ignorance
Or deliberate psychological manipulation

 

Intelligence operations do not function through informal influence, but through documented command protocols.

Intelligence agencies monitor threats — they do not pre-emptively arrest without legal mandate.
Criminalizing intelligence monitoring collapses the legal firewall between observation and enforcement.

Any claim of shadow command must be supported by operational orders, written instructions, or recorded communications — none of which exist – this was attempted by Channel 4 using Maulana but that attempt has also failed.

 

RETURNING TO HISTORICAL CONTEXT — THE LTTE WAR PHASE

 

During LTTE war:

• Muslims were primary LTTE targets
• Eastern Muslims were:
  • massacred
  • ethnically cleansed
  • terrorized

 

Therefore:

Military Intelligence:

• actively recruited Muslim informants
• cultivated radical groups
• used Islamist networks to penetrate LTTE cells

 

So:

Using Muslim extremists as:

• informants
• penetrators
• moles
• assets

 

was:

STATE NECESSITY, NOT IDEOLOGICAL SYMPATHY

This collapses:

“Sallay radicalized Zahran”

No — Sallay’s generation infiltrated extremists to destroy the LTTE.

 

Why did those who are using the above not raise objection to using Zaharan as an informant against the LTTE then?

There was no operational space for Islamic extremism during LTTE dominance.

Islamic extremism arose thereafter – Zaharan became extremist after falling to ideological influence just like Ibrahim’s 2 well-educated sons and the other 7 suicide bombers.

 

Intelligence agencies do not disengage from human assets based on future hypothetical misuse.

If this logic were accepted, every intelligence service on earth would be criminally liable for every terror act committed by former informants.

THE 2015 SECURITY COLLAPSE — ROOT CAUSE OF EXTREMIST EXPANSION

 

After regime change in 2015:

• Counter-terror surveillance units were dismantled
  • Intelligence officers were imprisoned on fabricated charges
  • Intelligence coordination collapsed
  • Sallay was removed from domestic intelligence and posted abroad

 

As a result:

Systematic monitoring of Islamic extremism ceased.

 

Between 2015–2019, extremist networks expanded without state surveillance, enabling:

• Radical recruitment
  • Ideological indoctrination
  • Suicide infrastructure development
  • External terror coordination

This vacuum — not intelligence complicity — produced the Easter tragedy.

 

WHY THIS NARRATIVE IS BEING PUSHED

1. To Deflect Institutional Guilt – to shift blame from operational failures

 

Failures clearly lie with:
• SIS Director
• CNI
• IGP
• CID leadership
• Defence Secretary
• National Security Council dysfunction

A scapegoat diverts attention from systemic collapse – manufacture a villain.

 

2. To Bury Foreign Intelligence Inaction

Indian intelligence issued advance warnings. Yet preventive action was not taken.
Blame-shifting avoids confronting this institutional paralysis.

 

Political interference blocked arrests, delayed raids, and disrupted coordination.

An intelligence conspiracy story buries political accountability.

 

The Inquiry Reports/Commission of Inquiry clearly shows the top officials knew of an impending attack but had not acted to prevent civilian loss.

 

Ignoring this fact and trying to pin blame of someone else does not make sense unless the aim is to create a notion that he had instructed all the top officials not to act.

Even to think of such is an institutional absurdity to the entire security apparatus of Sri Lanka.

 

3️. To protect Political actors

Certain political factions:

• ignored warnings
• blocked arrests
• delayed raids
• interfered in CID operations

 

So:

Create an intelligence conspiracy story to bury political culpability.

 

CHANNEL 4 & JUSTICE IMAM REPORT

In September 2023, Channel 4 broadcast a program alleging a “grand plot” behind the Easter Sunday attacks, directly implicating Sri Lankan intelligence and floating a politically driven conspiracy theory.

 

This narrative relied almost entirely on Hamsa Maulana, a politically motivated exile currently residing abroad and seeking asylum. His credibility is undermined by his lack of documentation, inability to testify, and prior political affiliations that suggest a potential agenda. He failed to appear to testify before the Committee when invited.

 

The subsequently released Justice Imam Committee Report has now comprehensively dismantled this narrative.

 

Key findings:

• Gen. Suresh Sallaywas not in Sri Lanka at the alleged time of meetings — he was in New Delhi.
• Thecoconut estate meeting described by Hamsa never existed — police confirmed the structures did not exist.
• No evidenceexists of any communication, coordination, or instruction linking Sri Lankan intelligence to the attackers.
• Claims of apolitical motive to reinstall the Rajapaksas were deemed baseless conjecture.
• Hamsa’s testimony was classified as an“outright hoax” and unsupported by any corroboration.

 

The Committee described Channel 4’s broadcast as “yellow journalism”, warning against sensationalist reporting that distorts national security realities and misleads the public.

This matters because the same collapsed narrative framework is now being used to construct the Suresh Sallay conspiracy theory — by deliberately blurring the line between intelligence infiltration and terrorist complicity.

 

WHY SALLAY IS A PRIME TARGET

 

Sallay is hated by:

 

Group	Why
LTTE networks	He crippled LTTE intelligence
Islamist radicals	He penetrated extremist cells
Foreign NGOs	He blocked foreign interference
Regime-change operators	He disrupted destabilization agendas
Media-NGO complex	He obstructed narrative control

 

So:

Destroying Sallay weakens Sri Lanka’s intelligence spine.

 

The next favorite argument will be:

“Sallay used Zahran to destabilize the government and install Gotabaya.”

 

No intelligence doctrine — Eastern or Western — contains any operational model that sanctions civilian mass murder for political transition.

 

1️. Governments collapse from:

• economic mismanagement
• corruption
• governance failure
• weak governments appeasing to all & sundry become easy bait
  Not from terror operations.

 

2️. Mahinda Rajapaksa fell in 2015 without any terrorism

 

3️. 2018–2019 government was already collapsing:

• bond scams
• constitutional crisis
• political paralysis
• public anger
• economic stagnation
• local government election results clearly showed the yahapalana govt was on its way out of power.

 

So:

An Easter Sunday attack was not needed to overthrow that government.

 

The attempt to link Suresh Sallay to the Easter Sunday attacks is not a pursuit of truth. It is a strategic effort to collapse the distinction between intelligence infiltration and terrorist complicity, thereby criminalizing standard intelligence tradecraft itself.

 

This narrative is not designed to deliver justice. It is designed to conceal deeper institutional failures, shield political negligence, divert foreign accountability, and cripple Sri Lanka’s national intelligence capacity by demoralizing its armed forces and intelligence services.

 

At the same time, it dangerously deflects attention from the real and expanding threat — organized Islamic extremism — which continues to exploit political paralysis, institutional fear, and judicial confusion.

If this narrative succeeds, Sri Lanka will no longer be able to penetrate extremist networks, because every intelligence officer will fear future prosecution for doing precisely what intelligence officers are trained to do: cultivate assets, infiltrate hostile groups, and neutralize threats before they mature.

No democracy can survive if intelligence work itself becomes criminalized

 

That would represent not justice — but strategic self-destruction.

 

Selective Justice, Manufactured Villains & the Collapse of Credibility

Every single official report, Presidential Commission, and parliamentary inquiry into the Easter Sunday attacks converges on one uncontested fact:

The highest levels of Sri Lanka’s political, police, and intelligence leadership knew an attack was imminent and failed to act.

 

Yet, instead of enforcing accountability against those explicitly named and indicted by their own admissions, Sri Lanka now witnesses a grotesque inversion of justice:

Those not named are hunted.
Those named are protected.
And those who financed, facilitated, and ideologically nurtured the terrorists quietly walk free.

 

Nothing illustrates this moral and judicial collapse more starkly than the treatment of the father-in-law of one of the suicide bombers — a man from whose possession large quantities of gold, money, and assets were ceased, only for every single asset to be returned on the very same day of arrest.

This is not justice.
This is institutional mockery of justice.

 

If intelligence facilitation is to be criminalized, then:

• why are those who financed terror released?
• why are ideological incubators untouched?
• why are political gatekeepers unprosecuted?
• why are intelligence warnings admitted but inaction forgiven?

 

What moral logic allows gold seized from a terror financier to be returned within hours, while intelligence officers who never commanded operations are dragged through public humiliation becoming an internationalized drama?

 

What judicial system punishes non-command actors while protecting command authorities?

 

This selective outrage reveals the truth:

The objective is not accountability.
The objective is narrative engineering.

 

When guilt is assigned not by evidence but by convenience, justice ceases to exist. What remains is political theatre dressed in legal costume.

 

The people of Sri Lanka deserve to ask:

If top officials admitted knowledge of an imminent attack and failed to act —
why is that failure forgiven?

 

If financiers and ideological enablers are released —
why are intelligence officers not named in any reports prosecuted?

 

And if every report identifies systemic institutional collapse,
why is one individual being manufactured as the villain?

 

Until these contradictions are answered, every prosecution connected to Easter Sunday stands morally compromised.

 

This is not justice.
This is strategic scapegoating.

And it will not heal the wounds of the victims.

In fact the people must question those unable to accept the facts and wonder why they too are demanding a manufactured villain to be made guilty?

It will only ensure that the next attack finds Sri Lanka even more blind, more divided, and more defenceless while a demoralized armed force and politicized police will simply wait and watch.

 

 

 

 

Shenali D Waduge