“The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself” is the 3rd verse of the Swedish pop band ABBA’s first international hit song that caught the limelight at the Eurovision Song Contest of 1974.
Although the relationship between my family and me is in a severely damaged condition for more than two years following my public declaration of apostasy before the Parliament Select Committee on the 20th of June 2019, three days ago, I received a message from my family about a neighboring Muslim lady suspiciously inquiring about me with unrelated, irrelevant and contradicting explanations. In one of her explanations, she had told my family that a person had a parcel for me to be delivered, but my family had rejected it right away. I started having a déjà vu. This explanation reminded me Hayaththu Mohammed Ahmed Milhan’s attempt at my life by intruding into the house of one of my close relatives. The house was mistakenly marked by the local ISIS assassins as mine. Ahmed Milhan had told my relative that he had a parcel from Canada to deliver me. Ahamed Milhan is the main suspect in the murders of two police officers at Vavunathivu and the shooting of Mohamed Thaslim in Mawanella. Ahmed Milhan was found by Saudi Arabian authorities while hiding inside an airport in Saudi Arabia. Now he is in remand custody in Sri Lanka, awaiting charges.
I have survived six attempts by local ISIS terrorists according to the details found in investigations and interrogations by different divisions of the Sri Lankan Police Department. Thinking that there was another one going on had increased the depression and gave me panic attacks. I had to call my friend Sharmila Seyyid, who had faced a similar situation a couple of years ago, to make myself calm. Sharmila Seyyid and another friend from India were able to calm me up to some extend.
I immediately informed the message received from my family to few good-hearted dedicated officers of the Police. They were good enough to take it seriously and began their investigation. Maradana police station became the center for the investigations. The officers were able to get few people into their investigation ring, one by one, tracing the contacts. Following a lengthy investigation and continued questioning, what the Police found, at last, was disturbing, irritating and shameful one. Yes, the police investigation ended up finding its own tail.
Officials from a different police division had outsourced people to search and find details about me. The untrained outsiders had created an unnecessary and uneasy situation. I cannot understand the need for one such Police division to outsource people to find me while I am always available within their arm’s reach. If the Police finding of the case is factual, it shows nothing but the lack of coordination among different law enforcement divisions of Sri Lanka. Law enforcement may have their own justifiable reason for not sharing every information within themselves. Still, such a lack of coordination among the law enforcement divisions in important matters has left bloodstains in the Police history.
In 2002 January, a special team of Sri Lanka Police led by Superintendent of Police Kulasiri Udugampola raided a military safe house at Millennium City housing scheme in Athurugiriya, operated by Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) of the Sri Lanka Army. The identities of the DIM officials reached Tamil Tigers, which resulted in many officials and informants involved were either killed or made disappeared. This incident is known as Millennium City Raid in history. There might be few more such flops in the recent history of the law enforcement divisions, but it is well known how the law enforcement messed up with a detailed red alert received nine days before the Easter Sunday Suicide Attacks of 2019.
It seems the law enforcement of the country has not learned any lessons from past mistakes such as Millennium City Raid, Easter Sunday Attacks, etc. If the same situation continues, all the good works done by dedicated officers will go down the drain. If the mistakes are not corrected, same as the title of the above-mentioned song of ABBA, one day the law enforcement of the country will meet its Waterloo.
-Rishvin Ismath
10.09.2021