Addressing two public rallies in Kalutara district over the weekend, Anura Kumara Dissanayake said the then government used the same bank account to fund both groups.

His remarks came as the then head of the State Intelligence Service (SIS), Suresh Sallay, remains in custody, accused of masterminding the April 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 279 people, including 45 foreigners.

A suicide squad of the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) which carried out the bombings against three churches and three hotels was known to have been on the payroll of Military Intelligence (MI), of which Sallay was a senior member before eventually heading the spy agency.

Sallay was promoted to head of the SIS soon after Gotabaya Rajapaksa became president in November 2019, in the wake of the uncertainty and fear following the deadly Easter attacks blamed on home-grown Muslim extremists.

The Easter Sunday attack had been designed to create fear among Sinhalese and secure their vote for Gotabaya at the November elections which he won, according to testimony in the ongoing court case.

"When we took office and inspected, we saw that they paid money to Sinhala extremist groups and Muslim extremist groups from the exact same account.

"They gave them money and unleashed them like dogs to bite each other. They started ethnic clashes. Didn’t they? Why? To create clashes in Dambulla, Akurana, Digana and Mawanella. They set up these extremist groups on both sides," he said.

Sallay has denied involvement in the Easter Sunday attacks, but evidence before several commissions of inquiry has shown that the leader of the Easter Sunday suicide squad, Zahran Hashim, had been on the military's payroll.

A former minister and one-time spokesman of the Rajapaksa cabinet, Keheliya Rambukwella admitted that they funded Zahran’s group to obtain information about other Muslim groups.

The Presidential Commission of Inquiry headed by Justice Janak de Silva recommended banning the nationalist Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), a group said to have been created by Military Intelligence to counter Muslim groups.

"The government pumped money to both sides," Dissanayake said. "These people did not want to unite the people and govern the country. Their plan was to divide the people, to make them clash and fight. These are the kind of rulers we had.

"Consequently, our country became a 'black country', defined as a nation where all citizens were deprived of their rights and certain ethnic groups were isolated.

"I would like to state that it has been two years since we formed the government, and this year is the first year in history in which not a single complaint was lodged at a police station regarding an ethnic clash.

"What does that mean? We are systematically unravelling the ‘Black State’ that enveloped every aspect of our country.” (COLOMBO/Sept7/2026)