A young mother of two in the coastal Sri Lankan town of Kattankudy sits in disbelief.
Mohammad Hashim Madaniya has found out that her brother, Zahran Hashim, is the alleged ringleader of a group of suicide bombers who attacked churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, killing more than 350 people.
She says she is horrified by what he has done and fears what could happen next. She has been interviewed by police but is not being treated as a suspect.
It’s still not clear if Mr Hashim, who is accused of leading a group of bombers (alleged to include two sons of a wealthy tycoon), is alive or dead.
Wearing a white scarf, Ms Madaniya sits uncomfortably in the humidity of Kattankudy, a predominantly Muslim town overlooking the Indian Ocean.
She is clearly unhappy with the attention that she is getting.
She is the youngest of five siblings and Mr Hashim, believed to be around 40, is the eldest. She insists she has had no contact with her brother since 2017, when he went underground after police tried to arrest him over violence between ideologically opposed Muslim groups.
Since Sunday’s attacks, a video has emerged in which a man believed to be Zahran Hashim appears pledging allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State (IS) group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
His is the only face visible among eight men who are said by IS to have carried out the attacks.
Sri Lankan police say there were nine attackers in total, including a woman, and that they were all homegrown. They were described as “educated” and “middle class” – with one having studied in the UK and Australia. Two were sons of a prominent spice trader who is now in custody, and one of the men’s wives blew herself up during a raid on Sunday, killing her two children and several police officers, police sources say.
“I came to know about his activities only through the media. I never thought, even for a moment, that he would do such a thing,” says Ms Madaniya of her brother.
“I strongly deplore what he has done. Even if he is my brother, I cannot accept this. I don’t care about him any more.”
