The copper merchant has been pictured, alongside his spice tycoon father, receiving awards at a state-sponsored ceremony for entrepreneurs. Both Colombo merchants are reported to have been liaising closely with the alleged mastermind of the attack – Zaran Hashim, a known troublemaker from the country’s Eastern province.

He was a strange child, who broke away from the teachings of his original Islamic school to indoctrinate others, according to reports.

People who knew him say he was charismatic, fluent in Arabic and self-radicalised.

One of his associates has described him and his ilk as having “the necessary mindset” to carry out the atrocities.

Some of the operatives in Colombo, for example, seemed to operate like automata. Jameel Mohamed, who studied engineering in Britain, hailed from a tea-trading family in the country’s hill region and by all accounts had been planning a holiday – a family excursion – out of the city with his relatives. There was no inkling that he was in fact planning a terror attack.

Others showed more emotion. Imsath Ibrahim, the son of a wealthy spice trader, left a recording apologising to his mother. In it, he said he had decided to give his life for his faith, and asked for his mother’s forgiveness.

Not all the bombers were so repentant, however. Hashim had been vocally at odds with the mosques in Colombo about matters such as the end of the Ramadan fast – preferring to follow diktats issued by other believers in places such as Indonesia.

This put him at odds with Sri Lanka’s Islamic mainstream in places like Kattankudy, in the Eastern province.

Hashim previously staged protests across the road from an orthodox mosque in Kattankudy and by all accounts was well prepared for retaliation.

Eventually, such protests led to skirmishes and even sword fights, which the police have on record.

Perhaps the strangest part in all this is that Hashim, and radical elements like him, actually helped the Sri Lankan government during the country’s civil war.

They set up roadblocks to check for suspicious vehicles and helped keep the peace in the face of attacks by Tamil separatists – even receiving money from the state at times for their work.

But in the years since, they have forged connections with radical elements, such as the wealthy spice-trading Ibrahim family.

Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim, patriarch of that family, is now in custody. He is believed to have been the driving force behind his radicalised sons.

A known operative of the left-leaning Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna movement, which led two armed insurrections against the government in the past, he ran for office in the last parliamentary elections – and lost.

Such are the strange antecedents of those extremists who wreaked havoc across Sri Lanka on that fateful Sunday, one week ago. ■