Colombo, Apr 25 (PTI) A Sri Lankan TV journalist was quizzed for over five hours on Tuesday by the police over a 2021 interview with the then Attorney General who claimed that the 2019 Easter Sunday terror attack was a conspiracy, a media report said.

Nine suicide bombers belonging to the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat (NTJ) linked to ISIS carried out a series of blasts that tore through three Catholic churches and as many luxury hotels on April 21, 2019, killing more than 270 people and injuring over 500.

Also Read | Chrisann Pereira Arrested: UAE Jails Sadak 2 Actress in 'Planted' Drugs Case, Kin To Appeal to PM Narendra Modi, MEA.

The bombings triggered a political storm as then President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe were blamed for their inability to prevent the attacks despite prior intelligence being made available.

The journalist from the television station News First interviewed the then Attorney General Dappula de Livera in 2021, the tv station announced.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: European Union Nations Seek To End Ukrainian Farm Import Standoff.

During the interview Livera, who was retiring a month later, had claimed that the 2019 Easter Sunday bombing was a conspiracy.

Livera himself was summoned by the Terrorism Investigations Division (TID) last week to record a statement on his conspiracy comment.

He declined to attend the TID and filed an action in the court of appeal that the police has no power to question him on a statement made when he was holding office based on the information made available to him.

He told the court that he made the statement in the public interest.

Police would initiate legal action against Livera over his failure to record a statement.

The investigations into the Easter attack bombing have caused a political storm with the head of the Catholic Church Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith remaining unhappy. He alleges that the investigation has been more of a cover-up than a mechanism to deliver justice to victims of the attack.

A presidential panel of inquiry appointed by Sirisena after the attacks ironically found the then-president guilty of his failure to prevent the attacks despite prior intelligence warnings.

He, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge in the case filed after the panel's findings.

Officials have charged dozens of people who allegedly received weapons training and participated in indoctrination classes from the two local Islamic extremist groups accused of carrying out the attacks.

But no one has yet been convicted or sentenced.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)