Sri Lanka Files Charges Against 25 Easter Bombing Suspects

COLOMBO, SRI LANKA - Sri Lanka has filed 23,270 charges against 25 people in connection with the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide bomb attacks on churches and hotels that killed 269 people, the president's office said Wednesday.

The charges filed Tuesday under the country's anti-terror law include conspiring to murder, aiding and abetting, collecting arms and ammunition, and attempted murder, it said. The attorney general also asked the chief justice to appoint a special three-member high court bench to hear the cases speedily, it said in a statement. Two local Muslim groups that had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group were blamed for the six near-simultaneous suicide bomb attacks on April 21, 2019. The blasts targeted three churches and three hotels.