‘Partial satisfaction’: Sri Lankans hail 2019 bombings ruling with a caveat

Colombo, Sri Lanka – On the morning of April 21, 2019, tuk-tuk driver Indika Rohan took his wife and daughter to the local church for the Easter Sunday mass.

He dropped them outside St Sebastian’s Church in the Katuwapitiya area of Negombo, a scenic Christian-majority town north of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo.

As he went back to his tuk-tuk parked near the church, he heard a huge explosion.

A suicide attacker had detonated himself inside the church in a coordinated attack inspired by the ISIL (ISIS) group in two other churches and three luxury hotels across Sri Lanka, killing 279 people, including 45 foreigners, and injuring more than 500 others.

It was Rohan’s last ride with his 13-year-old daughter, Kanishka Hirushi, who was among 110 people killed at St Sebastian’s Church. His severely injured wife, Nilanthi Pushpakumari, 50, spent weeks in the ICU recovering.

“My daughter went to the church by tuk-tuk, but returned home by hearse,” he told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, as he welcomed a court verdict that convicted 15 men over the Easter Sunday bombings – the deadliest in Sri Lanka’s history.

All the men directly involved in the attacks were believed to have died. Authorities later arrested 25 suspects accused of planning the attacks – all of them Muslims.

On Tuesday, a three-judge bench of the High Court in Colombo found 15 of them guilty of more than 23,000 charges, including murder, conspiracy to commit terrorist attacks, and possession of firearms and explosives.