Former Sri Lankan president denies that suicide bombings were staged to enable his election
Former Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Thursday denied allegations in a British television program that Islamic State-inspired extremists were used to carry out suicide bomb attacks in 2019 to create insecurity in the country and help him win election later that year. “To claim that a group of Islamic extremists launched suicide attacks in order to make me president is absurd,” Rajapaksa said in a public statement, his first since being ousted from power in July last year. In the program broadcast Tuesday, Channel 4 interviewed a man who said he arranged a meeting be...