Sri Lanka Attorney General Office Admits Failure Banning Terror NTJ Groups, Website

Experts are calling on ministers to bring in new cyber terrorism laws, after the latest admissions by the attorney general office admits that they were asked to ban National Thawheed Jammath (NTJ) and Jamathei Millathu Ibraheem (JMI) in Sri Lanka.

Senior Deputy Solicitor General Sumathi Dharmawardena and Senior State Counsel Abdul Malik Aziz while testifying before the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) probing the Easter Sunday bomb attacks admitted that the AG Department failed to provide information to the CID on banning the NTJ and its websites and social media platforms.

Terrorists Investigation Division (TID) submitted a report over two years ago in a 63-page report. Which included print out of web pages of the groups’ website and other social media platforms.

Ministers are now looking into setting out cyber-security measures and rules as Sri Lanka does have any cyber terrorism laws for the Attorney General to quote.

‘Asian Tribute’ was the first news outlet to report on the internet and websites of the NTJ in several detailed reports.

The Sri Lankan terrorism investigations division heavily criticized by many had their hands tied by lack of laws, rules and direction and to be fair so was the attorney general office.

The attorney general office was being asked legal questions about a subject that parliament had passed no laws on.

The main website of NTJ was linked to social media platforms and ran a media campaign via ntjweb.com media wing. But this under present Sri Lankan laws was not against the law and law enforcement agencies who wanted to act had no laws to do so.

Website and other media platforms are a tool for terrorism, the internet has become a popular platform to plan attacks, even email addresses can be used by terrorist organizations they share passwords to email addresses which is probably the way NTJ claimed responsibility after the attacks, by uploading a film to an email account with a known password to the account by someone else who could of course even be abroad.

The claims for responsibility for the attacks were first posted by someone to telegram encrypted chatrooms used by Islamic state terrorist.

But the file to the film may of been sat in a ntjweb.com email address and a person could of just logged into the email address then uploaded it to telegram.

But with no laws on cyber terrorism there is no legal way of investigating or enforcing cyber security.

There are many different ways to connect the dots and do checks on past file sharing but without laws passed in parliament on misuse of the internet, websites, social media, emails etc. Anti-terror officers would effectively be operating outside the law.

Parliament itself has not in this connecting world provided law enforcement with the tools of the 20th century. This must change as quickly as MPs can bring new laws into place.

- Asian Tribune -