Easter Sunday: Why Was Asanga Abeyagoonasekera Transferred?
The unanswered question surrounding an early warning, the intelligence failure, and the removal of a national-security official
More than seven years after the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks, Sri Lanka continues to confront unanswered questions about intelligence failures, institutional decisions and the warnings that preceded one of the country's darkest days.
Among those questions is one that deserves renewed public attention:
Why was Asanga Abeyagoonasekera, a senior national-security official who had identified a serious terrorist threat months before the Easter Sunday attacks, subsequently removed from the very institution responsible for national-security research?
This is not simply a question about one individual. It is a question about how Sri Lanka's national-security system treated intelligence analysis before and after the Easter Sunday attacks.
According to the material examined in the attached article, Abeyagoonasekera was serving as Director General of the Institute of National Security Studies of Sri Lanka (INSS) when he produced a significant threat assessment in January 2019—approximately four months before the Easter Sunday bombings.
The circumstances surrounding what happened to him afterward remain a matter requiring documentary and institutional examination.
A Warning Four Months Before Easter Sunday
In January 2019, Abeyagoonasekera's Monthly Threat Forecast identified the discovery of detonators at Wanathavilluwa as a significant national-security concern.
The assessment reportedly called for the network behind the discovery, including possible foreign connections, to be urgently investigated.
This becomes particularly important when the timeline of the Easter Sunday attacks is considered.
The document was not described as an ordinary public research paper. According to the source material, it was produced through the national-security machinery and submitted through the relevant authorities to the President, who at the time was also Minister of Defence. It was marked "Top Secret" and "For President's Eyes Only."
That designation raises the importance of the document.
If a national-security institution had already identified a potentially serious terrorist threat in January 2019, the subsequent failure to connect that assessment with later intelligence becomes a central question in understanding what went wrong.
The April Intelligence Warning
The Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Easter Sunday attacks examined Abeyagoonasekera's evidence and his January 2019 threat forecast.
The Commission referred to his evidence and assessment at several points, including pages 257, 262 and 352, and examined its relationship with an intelligence warning received from India in April 2019.
According to Abeyagoonasekera's account, had he received the April intelligence warning, it would have directly corresponded with the threat he had already identified months earlier.
That point is crucial.
The April warning was not necessarily arriving in an institutional vacuum. There was already a national-security assessment identifying a potentially connected threat.
Yet, according to the source material, the information was not communicated to his office.
That produces one of the most disturbing institutional questions surrounding the Easter Sunday tragedy:
Why was a national-security official who had already identified the threat excluded from the intelligence loop when the most critical warning arrived?
Then Came the Transfer
The story becomes even more difficult when what happened to Abeyagoonasekera after the attacks is examined.
He was abruptly informed that he was being transferred to Berlin as Minister Counsellor. Preparations for the proposed posting reportedly began, including requests for information about his family, medical requirements and luggage.
But the transfer was ultimately never implemented.
This creates an unusual sequence of events.
The Director General of the country's national-security research institution was removed from his position, yet the diplomatic posting to which he was reportedly transferred never actually took place.
The INSS position was subsequently occupied by Admiral Professor Jayanath Colombage, who later became Foreign Secretary. A later communication from Defence Secretary General Kamal Gunaratne indicated that the position was to be held pending the arrival of Professor Rohan Gunaratna.
The obvious questions therefore remain:
Who made the decision to remove Abeyagoonasekera?
Why was the Berlin transfer ordered?
Why was the transfer never implemented?
And most importantly:
Was his national-security research or his work concerning the Easter Sunday threat a factor in the decision?
These questions should not be answered through political speculation. They require documents, testimony and institutional accountability.
A Direct Appeal to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake
The issue did not disappear.
In April 2025, Abeyagoonasekera wrote to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake requesting an examination of the circumstances surrounding his transfer and what he described as obstruction of his research.
According to the source material, he raised concerns about political interference and institutional compromise and described the transfer as unexplained.
That appeal raises a broader question for the current government.
If Sri Lanka's national-security institutions are to be strengthened, should the state examine the history of how national-security analysts were treated when they produced uncomfortable warnings?
A serious investigation would not require the government to automatically accept every claim made by any individual.
Instead, it would require the government to examine the documents, establish the chain of command and determine why decisions were made.
The Gotabaya Rajapaksa Question
Another significant element emerges from Abeyagoonasekera's account in his book Winds of Change.
He says that former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa told him in 2024 that he had not personally ordered his removal and instead attributed the decision to senior advisers.
If that account is accurate, it changes the nature of the question.
The issue is no longer simply:
Why was Asanga Abeyagoonasekera transferred?
It becomes:
Who ordered the transfer? Who advised the decision? What information was presented to the decision-makers? And why was a national-security official removed after producing an earlier warning that later appeared relevant to the Easter Sunday threat?
Those questions deserve answers based on evidence.
Accountability Must Include Those Who Raised Warnings
The Easter Sunday attacks killed hundreds of innocent people and fundamentally changed Sri Lanka's national-security environment.
Much of the subsequent discussion has focused on those who failed to act on intelligence warnings.
That accountability is essential.
But there is another dimension that should not be ignored.
What happened to those who raised warnings?
A functioning national-security system should encourage intelligence analysts to identify emerging threats. Analysts must be able to report uncomfortable findings without fear that their professional position will be jeopardised because their conclusions are politically inconvenient.
If officials are punished or marginalised for producing legitimate warnings, the damage goes far beyond one individual.
It weakens the entire warning system.
The lesson for Sri Lanka should therefore be straightforward: national-security institutions must protect credible analysis, even when that analysis is politically uncomfortable.
The Larger Significance of Asanga Abeyagoonasekera
According to the source material, Abeyagoonasekera subsequently continued his international work, including association with the Washington-based Millennium Project and technical advisory work with international institutions, including the IMF, on governance-related matters. His later work has continued to focus on national security, governance, economic crime and geopolitical risk.
The significance of his case therefore extends beyond his personal career.
If an official produced a documented warning before Easter Sunday, gave evidence before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry, and was subsequently removed from the national-security machinery under circumstances that remain unexplained, then the public has a legitimate interest in understanding exactly what happened.
That does not mean automatically concluding that the transfer was politically motivated.
It means demanding that the evidence be examined.
Sri Lanka Needs an Independent Review
The most constructive way forward would be an independent review of the circumstances surrounding Abeyagoonasekera's transfer, his exclusion from the relevant intelligence loop and the subsequent handling of his national-security research.
The review should examine the original documents, communications, orders, correspondence and decision-making chain.
It should establish who recommended the transfer, who approved it, what reasons were recorded and why the Berlin appointment was ultimately abandoned.
It should also establish whether his January 2019 threat assessment was considered by the relevant authorities and whether the April intelligence warning could have been better integrated with the earlier assessment.
These are questions of institutional history, not merely personal grievance.
If the evidence eventually demonstrates that Abeyagoonasekera was removed unjustifiably, or because of legitimate national-security analysis that had become politically inconvenient, corrective action should be considered.
That should not be viewed as a favour to an individual.
It would be a matter of institutional justice.
The Warning Came—Why Was the System Weakened?
Ultimately, the Easter Sunday tragedy is not only a story about the warnings that were missed.
It is also a story about whether Sri Lanka's national-security institutions were capable of receiving, analysing and connecting warnings before disaster occurred.
The central question surrounding Asanga Abeyagoonasekera therefore remains:
The warning came. Why was the warning system itself weakened?
Sri Lanka cannot change what happened on Easter Sunday.
But it can decide whether the lessons of that tragedy will be properly learned.
If national-security officials who identify threats are encouraged to speak early, institutional systems become stronger.
If they are excluded, transferred or marginalised without transparent reasons, the entire national-security architecture becomes vulnerable.
The case of Asanga Abeyagoonasekera therefore deserves more than political debate.
It deserves documents.
It deserves answers.
And above all, it deserves an independent examination of whether Sri Lanka protected the people who warned the country before the next warning arrived.
The Easter Sunday question is ultimately larger than Asanga Abeyagoonasekera. It is a question about whether Sri Lanka's national-security system will protect truth-tellers before the next threat becomes another national tragedy.