COLOMBO: A former Tamil rebel was jailed for 290 years by a Sri Lankan court Wednesday for his involvement in an attempt to assassinate then president Chandrika Kumaratunga with a bomb that killed 28 people, a court official said.
Sathiyaveil Illangeshwaran, 30, pleaded guilty to smuggling the explosives used by a suicide bomber at a 1999 election rally in Colombo. Kumaratunga was injured in the attack along with 80 others.
Illangeshwaran received the bomb from the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and gave it to the suicide attacker at a Hindu temple, the court heard.
The temple priest, his wife and another person are also in custody facing charges of conspiracy to assassinate the president. They have not pleaded guilty and the trial against them is pending.
Tamil rebels were responsible for the 1993 assassination of then-president Ranasinghe Premadasa in Colombo and former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 at an election rally in India's Tamil Nadu state.
The army defeated the separatist rebels and killed its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in May 2009.