Fifteen people convicted over Sri Lanka’s 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks will challenge their jail terms of more than 200 years each, a defence lawyer said on Wednesday.

The attacks, carried out by nine suicide bombers from the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat, linked to ISIS, had targeted three Catholic churches and three luxury hotels on April 21, 2019.

Nearly 270 people, including 11 Indians, were killed in the bombings and more than 500 were injured. On Tuesday, a three-judge High Court Trial-at-Bar found 15 of the 24 accused guilty of involvement in the attacks and handed each of them prison terms of more than 200 years.

The bench comprised Judges Navaratne Marasinghe, Ramanathan Kannan and Sujeewa Nissanka. Defence counsel Kneel Maddumage, who appeared for seven of the accused, said the convictions and the record jail terms would be challenged in the Supreme Court after the relevant documents are received.

“Some of the defendants are not represented by counsel, but I requested on behalf of all the convicts that they be provided with copies of the proceedings to file their appeals,” Maddumage said.

Initially, 25 people were charged over their role in the bombings. After one of the accused died, 24 were indicted in October 2021. A total of 23,270 charges were brought against them, and 2,309 witnesses testified for the prosecution.

Catholic Church spokesman Father Jude Krishantha welcomed the verdict and said it had brought a sense of justice to the victims. “We feel satisfied because the relatives of those who died were expecting justice,” Krishantha said.

In July, former defence ministry bureaucrat Hemasiri Fernando and former police chief Pujith Jayasundara were sentenced to death for failing to act on prior intelligence that could have prevented the attacks. The bombings had triggered a political storm, with then President Maithripala Sirisena and then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe blamed for failing to prevent them despite prior intelligence being available.

A presidential panel appointed by Sirisena after the attacks later found the then president guilty of failing to prevent them, though Sirisena pleaded not guilty in the case filed after the panel’s findings. In 2023, Sirisena and the top defence hierarchy were also ordered to pay multiple millions of rupees as compensation to the families of the blast victims, as the case continues to shape accountability for the Easter Sunday attacks.

With PTI Inputs