Sri Lanka is worried about the increasing trend of well-educated youth from well-to-do families getting involved in terrorist activities.
Rawan Wijewardene said: “This group of suicide bombers, most of them are well-educated and come from the middle or upper-middle class, so they are financially quite independent and their families are quite stable financially, that is a worrying factor in this.”
One of the suicide bombers studied in the UK and did his postgraduation from Australia. The authorities are investigating whether he was influenced and inspired when he was abroad or after he returned to Sri Lanka.
The investigators are also looking into where the funds came from and if the links to the ISIS were direct or were they just inspired by the ISIS.
“We believe that one of the suicide bombers studied in the UK and later did his postgraduate [studies] in Australia before coming back and settling in Sri Lanka… Some of them have I think studied in various other countries, they hold degrees, LLMs [law degrees], they’re quite well-educated people”, said Ruwan Wijewardene.
Early warnings from India’s intelligence services to Sri Lankan officials ahead of the Easter Sunday bombings were based on information gleaned from an ISIS suspect in custody.
The suspect gave investigators the name of a man he had trained, who is associated with a Sri Lankan extremist group implicated in the bombings, the source said.
The man, Zahran Hashim, was identified in a video of the purported attackers released Tuesday by ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the Easter Sunday killings.
In a statement published by the ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq, the group said the attackers were “fighters of the Islamic State.”
As investigators scrambled to track down the bombers’ associates, there was growing anger in Sri Lanka at the failure to heed the warnings of India’s intelligence service.
The first warning came more than two weeks before the attacks. Sri Lankan officials were told on April 4 of a potential plot to launch suicide attacks against Christian churches and tourist spots, government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne told reporters on Monday. The warnings were repeated two days and two hours before the attacks, Senaratne said.
Are youth falling into the trap of terrorism?