Sri Lanka’s High Court convicted 14 of the 24 defendants tried for direct involvement in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, and found a 15th guilty on some of the charges while acquitting nine others, according to Al Jazeera and The Hindu.

The convictions include murder, conspiracy to commit terrorism, and the possession of firearms and explosives under the Prevention of Terrorism Act; the three-judge bench said sentencing would be delivered later on Tuesday. Six near-simultaneous bombings struck three churches and three luxury hotels on April 21, 2019, killing 279 people, 45 of them foreign nationals — the deadliest attack in the country since the end of its civil war in 2009. The verdict runs alongside the investigation into Suresh Sallay, the former head of the State Intelligence Service (SIS), arrested in February 2026 on accusations of orchestrating the attacks, which he denies.