Counsel from the Attorney General’s Department testifying before the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Easter bombings yesterday defended their Department’s delays in responding to Terrorism Investigation Division warnings over Easter attack leader Zahran Hashim’s dangerous behaviour as far back as 2017.
AG Department officials were questioned extensively by the PSC on the actions taken by the Department and the cause for a delay of one and half years to respond to the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) which had sought advice from the AG as early as 2017 on how the National Thowheed Jama’ath and Zahran should be dealt with under the law.
State Counsel Malik Azeez, who was designated by Attorney General Dappula de Livera to testify before the Select Committee, said that although the Terrorism Investigation Division had filed a case against Zahran in 2018 under the ICCPR Act, specific information relating to the individual and the organization had not been passed on to the AG. State Counsel Azeez then read out the two letters that the AG’s department had received from the TID and pointed out that the annexure to the first letter included images taken from Zahran Hashim Facebook pages and screenshots of videos taken from Zahran’s NTJ websites.
“As per the legal regulation there is no law to prohibit or ban a website,” he said adding that the TID sent the second letter a year later reminding the AG’s department of their previous request, but took no steps to update the AG on the case against Zahran or the NTJ.
“Even in the second letter, they (the TID) have merely translated the documents sent in the first letter. We called them for a consultation. Two officers of the TID were present and the Department advised them to file a complete application,” Azeez explained.
(Daily News)