Suicide bombers included two sons of Sri Lanka spice tycoon

He built his fortune on black pepper, white pepper, nutmeg, cloves and vanilla. His family lived in a beautiful white villa and travelled in a chauffeured BMW. He was feted by Sri Lanka’s former president for “outstanding service provided to the nation.”

But on Wednesday the narrative of Mohammad Yusuf Ibrahim, one of Sri Lanka’s wealthiest spice traders, was ripped apart. Officials revealed he was in custody in connection with the devastating suicide attacks on Easter Sunday that killed more than 350 people.

An Indian official said that two of Ibrahim’s sons, who have been identified in Indian media reports as Inshaf and Ilham, were among the eight suicide bombers who struck at hotels and churches across this island. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, and investigators said Ibrahim was being extensively interrogated.

During a raid Sunday at his family’s villa near Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, a female suspect blew herself up in front of two of her children, killing them all, along with several police officers who were closing in, investigators said. The Indian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of a major terrorism investigation, said the woman who killed herself and her children was most likely the wife of one of Ibrahim’s sons.

Police stand guard on Tuesday, Apr 23, 2019, outside a safe house in Colombo, Sri Lanka, that was raided and where suspects in Sunday's bombing attacks had been arrested. The New York Times

Sri Lankan officials have been reluctant to identify the suicide bombers, saying that could hamper their investigation.

But at a news conference on Wednesday, Ruwan Wijewardene, Sri Lanka’s state minister of defence, said most of the bombers had been well educated and had come from middle-class or upper-class families.

“Financially they are quite independent and their families are stable financially. So that is a worrying fact,” he said. “Some of them have studied in various other countries. They hold degrees, LLMs. They are quite well-educated people.”

Sri Lankan investigators are being assisted by a team of FBI agents who flew into Colombo amid a sense of urgency. The US ambassador to Sri Lanka, Alaina Teplitz, said there were “ongoing terrorist plots” and Wijewardene said “there could be still a few people out there.” He urged Sri Lankans to remain vigilant.

Officials said they were trying to determine what exactly were the bombers’ links to the Islamic State. The extremist group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, released a video showing Mohammed Zaharan, who has been identified as one of the suicide bombers, leading masked, black-clad disciples as they pledged allegiance to the organisation.

Before this attack, Zaharan was a not-so-successful Islamist preacher whose own village in eastern Sri Lanka ran him out because they did not appreciate his divisive views. He spread militant Islamist ideology on YouTube and, according to Indian investigators, helped inspire at least one Indian to draw closer to the Islamic State.

Muslims in Negombo, Sri Lanka, are relocated by bus to another town for their safety on Wednesday, Apr 24, 2019, three days after the Easter bombings. Until this week, Sri Lanka didn’t have much history of Christian-Muslim violence. The New York Times

Some Muslim leaders in Sri Lanka had been watching him closely and said he had developed a small but loyal band of followers.

As of Wednesday the Islamic State had not provided any further proof for its claim of responsibility of the attacks, and Wijewardene said investigators were eager to know if the group had provided training or financing. He said they had found no evidence to suggest that the bombers had travelled to the Middle East to fight for the Islamic State. Several dozen Sri Lankans recently returned home after having served the Islamic State in various capacities, including as soldiers, a Western security official said.

The bombings on Sunday struck nearly simultaneously at three churches and three upscale hotels. One was so powerful that it blew off the church’s roof, raining heavy clay tiles on people’s heads. It has been a puzzle trying to figure out how a little-known local group could carry out one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in recent years.

Still in recovery from a bitter civil war that ended a decade ago, Sri Lanka remains uneasy. In the last couple of days, security near the bomb sites has tightened. Schools have been shut until Monday, and the postal department is requiring that items sent by mail be wrapped in front of workers at post offices.

The flow of funerals continued, and many mourners on Wednesday focused their anger on the government and the security forces. In some areas, mobs of Christian men began to attack Muslims, driving hundreds from their homes.

All morning long, people gathered near one of the targeted churches, St. Sebastian’s in Negombo, to mourn the deceased at a mass burial.

One distraught woman could not stop crying and shouting at the police. She blamed them for not having acted on intelligence warnings of the attacks.

It was the Indian intelligence services that warned Sri Lanka about the possibility of these attacks. Indian agents had interrogated a man last year who was linked to the Islamic State, and who said he had been inspired by Zaharan’s videos on social media. That intelligence led to an investigation into Zaharan, and it was part of the basis for a detailed warning that the Indians provided to the Sri Lankan authorities about the possibility of suicide attacks on churches.

Mourners grieve at a mass funeral at St Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, Sri Lanka, on Tuesday, Apr 23 2019. The New York Times

The warning was never relayed to church officials or shared broadly among Sri Lanka’s security services. The country’s own prime minister did not even know about it. Sri Lankan security agencies apparently took no action against members of Zaharan’s group, despite specific information provided by the Indians that included names, addresses and phone numbers. Nor did they beef up security at churches. The warning of impending attack was repeated by the Indians just hours before the bombings, according to an Indian official.

During a national address on Tuesday, President Maithripala Sirisena tried to deflect criticism that he was at least partly responsible for the security failure. He acknowledged that “there was an intelligence report about the attack” but said he was “not kept informed” about it by subordinates.

On Wednesday, Sirisena asked Hemasiri Fernando, the permanent defence secretary, and Pujith Jayasundara, the inspector general of the police, to resign, according to a senior official at the president’s office. A lawmaker, Wijedasa Rajapakse, called for the two security officials to be arrested and prosecuted.

Many lawmakers dismissed assertions that the president would not have known about the threat memo, saying that blame for the security lapse should go all the way to the top.

Sarath Fonseka, a member of Parliament who was an army chief in the last stage of Sri Lanka’s civil war, told Parliament on Wednesday that he had known about the memo, as had the national intelligence chief. He said it was “obvious that the letter would have gone to the president.”

Sirisena, as president, also serves as minister of defence.

Authorities were saying little about their investigation into Ibrahim, the wealthy spice trader, and his family. He was a celebrated figure in Colombo’s business circles and politically connected.

One of Sri Lanka’s political parties, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, wanted to nominate him for a seat in Parliament, though that party failed to win enough votes to get him the actual seat.

Vijitha Herath, a leader within that party, said he did not know anything about Ibrahim’s possible role, or his sons’, in the terror attacks.

“He is a multibillionaire and a recognised businessman,” Herath said. “He wouldn’t have known what his sons did. There are things sons do, and fathers don’t know.”

Others seemed eager to distance themselves from the appearance of any prior associations with Ibrahim. Reached by phone, State Minister Sujeewa Senasinghe, who was photographed presenting the Presidential Export Award to Ibrahim in 2016, angrily denied any knowledge and hung up.

“I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “We give so many awards.”

© 2019 New York Times News Service