In a majority choice, a three-judge bench dominated that former police chief Pujith Jayasundara and former defence ministry secretary Hemasiri Fernando failed of their duties to cease the lethal assaults, blamed on a homegrown Islamist extremist group.
Jayasundara, 66, and Fernando, 76, can enchantment towards the sentence within the Supreme Court docket, however have been remanded to judicial custody till granted bail.
Sri Lanka has not carried out the dying sentence since 1976, sustaining an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment.
There are at the least 800 folks on dying row, in accordance with authorities figures shared with parliament in February, with sentences normally commuted to life imprisonment.
Friday’s judgement on the particular fast-track court docket got here after the state appealed towards a 2022 choice that acquitted the duo.
The court docket was advised in the course of the proceedings that an Indian intelligence company had alerted Sri Lanka on April 4, 2019 to a potential suicide assault by Islamist extremists, however authorities didn’t take motion.
