Sri Lanka's High Court has convicted 15 men for their involvement in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, which killed between 260 and 279 people and injured more than 500 others, including dozens of foreigners.
The coordinated attacks on April 21, 2019, targeted three churches and three luxury hotels across the island nation during Easter services and celebrations. The bombings were among the deadliest in Sri Lanka since the end of its civil war in 2009. Forty-two to 45 foreigners were among the dead.
After a five-year trial, a three-judge bench found 14 of the accused guilty on all charges on Tuesday. A 15th defendant was convicted on only some of the charges. Nine others were acquitted.
All 25 men originally charged are from Sri Lanka's minority Muslim community. One defendant died in custody before the verdict, leaving 24 to stand trial.
Authorities filed more than 23,000 charges against the accused. The charges included murder, conspiracy to commit terrorism, and possessing firearms and explosives under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. More than 2,300 witnesses gave evidence for the prosecution, and more than 2,000 pieces of evidence were presented, including explosives, swords and firearms.
Among those convicted on all charges was the man identified by prosecutors as the ringleader. He was named in reports as Naufer Moulavi, also referred to as Mohamed Naufar, who allegedly provided support to the eight-member squad that carried out the bombings. All of the bombers who directly participated in the attacks died in the blasts.
Two Sri Lanka-based Islamist militant groups were accused of carrying out the bombings.
The presiding judge told a packed courtroom that sentencing would take place later on Tuesday. Dozens of police commandos provided security outside the court complex as the verdicts were read.
Sri Lanka's Roman Catholic Church welcomed the convictions. "Finally, we have justice," Catholic priest Jude Fernando said. "It has taken a long time to get to this point."
Teresa Fernando, a survivor who suffered head injuries, also addressed the outcome. "We came here today as victims of this attack to receive justice," she said. "Whatever the court says... we will bow our heads and accept it."
Sri Lanka's Catholic Church has separately claimed, without providing evidence, that those identified so far as perpetrators are not the true masterminds behind the bombings, and that a larger conspiracy was behind the attacks.
The verdict follows years of public demonstrations by Sri Lankans demanding justice for the victims.
In the wake of the attacks, authorities acknowledged a major intelligence failure. A parliamentary committee found that police and intelligence officials failed to act on repeated warnings of the attacks, including a tip-off from India that was not properly shared with the relevant authorities.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ordered a former president to pay millions in compensation to victims after finding him responsible for national security failures that contributed to the attacks.
In July, a former police chief and a former senior defense ministry official were sentenced to death for criminal negligence in failing to act on foreign intelligence warnings. Death sentences in Sri Lanka are typically commuted to life imprisonment due to a decades-long moratorium on executions, with the country having carried out no executions since 1976.
A separate investigation is also under way involving a former intelligence chief accused of orchestrating the bombings with Islamist extremists. He was arrested in February and denies the allegations. A former president who came to power months after the attacks, running on a platform of tackling Islamist extremism, has also denied related allegations and has asked a court to prevent his potential arrest in connection with the ongoing investigations. He has been banned from leaving the country.
