Former Sri Lankan President and six-time Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe denied shielding ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa from prosecution, during an interview for Al Jazeera English’s ‘Head to Head’ that will air tomorrow (6).

He also rebuffed renewed accusations that his own administration failed to credibly investigate alleged government links to deadly terrorist attacks that rocked Sri Lanka in 2019.

Wickremesinghe, who was voted out of office in 2024, threatened to leave 8 minutes into the hour-long interview with Mehdi Hasan, but ultimately remained seated for a heated debate that also covered the government’s handling of war crimes investigations following the country’s civil war, and allegations of torture committed under his watch in the late 1980s.

“In my country, it’s the attorney general, who is not a political figure, who decides on prosecution – We can only send the evidence before him,” Wickremesinghe said when asked if he’d covered for ex-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the country in 2022 following mass protests.

Both Gotabaya and his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, a former Prime Minister and President, have been widely accused of corruption and war crimes and driving the country into a major financial crisis.

On letting Gotabaya Rajapaksa back into the country without arrest after Wickremesinghe took over the presidency in 2022, the latter said: “He could come [back] in. There’s no charge against him. How could I? Am I a dictator?”

Hasan also pressed Wickremesinghe on renewed accusations by the Catholic Church that his own government had protected “other forces” involved in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings carried out by an ISIS-affiliate.

In response, Wickremesinghe called the allegations “all nonsense” and an example of “the politics of the Catholic Church.”

“The head of the Catholic Church [in Sri Lanka] is talking nonsense?” Hasan clarified. “Yes,”Wickremesinghe said.

Wickremesinghe, who was Prime Minister in 2019, was responding to public statements by local Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, as well as exclusive comments the Cardinal had made to Al Jazeera’s Head to Head team before the TV recording. In a phone call with Al Jazeera, Ranjith said Wickremesinghe had failed to heed the Church’s request for a truly independent investigation and called an earlier inquiry and report during Wickremesinghe’s presidency “not worth the paper it was written on”.

Turning to truth and reconciliation for Sri Lanka’s civil war with the LTTE (also known as the Tamil Tigers), Hasan asked if justice had been served to the thousands of victims of the conflict that ended in 2009. Wickremesinghe conceded: “No. Justice has not been served to any of the communities.”

He accepted that aid had been blocked to war victims and some hospitals had been bombed but denied that such bombings were systematic.

“There had been occasions where the Air Force had bombed [hospitals] and action was taken against some of them. But on a large-scale, this thing? I wouldn’t say that.”

“According to a U.N. panel […], Sri Lankan government forces blocked the delivery of aid to victims of the war,” Hasan prompted.

“I admit that took place,” Wickremesinghe conceded, who was the opposition leader at the time of the final phase of the war.

Pressed on why, as President, he reappointed General Shavendra Silva – whom the US State Department accuses of war crimes – to head Sri Lanka’s armed forces, Wickremesinghe said, “It’s a practice not to replace military commanders during [an] election.” He added, “When I took over, I checked on it and I was satisfied that General Silva was not involved in it.”

Wickremesinghe went on to deny allegations made by a government commission that he knew of illegal detention, torture and killings happening at Batalanda, a housing complex he was living in as a minister in the late 1980s.

“I deny all those allegations,” he said when confronted with a government inquiry that named him as a “main architect” of securing the housing complex and alleged he, “to say the least, knew” about the violations taking place there.

Wickremesinghe first denied the existence of the report, of which Al Jazeera had obtained a copy, and later questioned its validity, saying it had never been discussed in parliament. “That was not tabled in Parliament and there is nothing to be found against me.”

Wickremesinghe, who was appointed president by parliament in 2022 amidst one of the biggest political and financial crises in Sri Lankan history, defended his own presidency and 2024 election loss:

“In two years, I put the economy back on track. And that means disinflation, compression. It’s very, very difficult. Will you survive that? No, I can’t see that,” he said about last year’s election in which he finished third.

”I’m quite happy. I did the job,” he said, referring, in part, to a landmark IMF deal he brokered as president. “There would have been a political and economic collapse of the country” (if he hadn’t taken over the Presidency).

Hasan and Wickremesinghe were joined by a panel of experts: Former BBC Sri Lanka correspondent and author of ‘Counting the Dead’, Frances Harrison; Former UK MP and envoy to Mr Wickremesinghe during his presidency, Nirj Deva; and Madura Rasaratnam, Executive Director of human rights organization PEARL and Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics at City, University of London.

Head to Head with Ranil Wickremesinghe airs Thursday, March 6 at 1200 GMT and repeats on March 8 at 0100 GMT, March 10 at 1200 GMT and March 12 at 0100 GMT.

The doctors of the Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital launched an idefinite strike against the sexual assault of a lady doctor at the Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital.

The suspect who sexually assaulted a lady doctor at the Anuradhapura Teaching hospital is found to be an army deserter, Minister of Public Security Ananda Wijepala told Parliament today.

Considering requests from various departments and affiliated bodies of the Ministries to fill vacant posts, the Cabinet has granted approval for the relevant Ministries and institutions to proceed with 5,882 recruitments, as recommended by the committee.

Claiming that the stance of the government on the Adani Wind Power project has not changed, Cabinet Spokesman Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa said today the Adani group can decide to pull out of the project if they are not ready to revise the tariff rates.

Cabinet Spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa was careful not to mention former Minister Tiran Alles' name despite numerous questions from journalists about potential links between former IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon and former Minister Alles.

Inspector General of Police Deshabandu Tennakoon, through his lawyer, has filed a writ petition before the Court of Appeal seeking an order to revoke the arrest warrant issued by the Matara Magistrate's Court. A two-judge bench of the Court of Appeal, comprising Justices Mohamed Laffar and Sarath Dissanayake, has fixed the petition for support on March 12.

New education reforms will be launched in 2026 and the process of preparing for it will take place in 2025, Prime Minister and Minister of Education Dr. Harini Amarasuriya said.

The Department of Meteorology has issued a weather advisory predicting showers across multiple regions of the country, with fairly heavy rainfall exceeding 75mm expected in several provinces.

Mark Carney has won the race to succeed Justin Trudeau as Canada's prime minister, vowing to win the trade war against US President Donald Trump as he takes charge of the country at a time of deep instability.

Former Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa has announced his candidacy for the upcoming Local Government Elections under the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) from the Hambantota District.