COLOMBO: LTTE leader Selvarasa Pathmanathan alias KP was nabbed by Sri Lankan sleuths on Wednesday from a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, according to D B S Jeyaraj, the veteran Canada-based Sri Lankan Tamil journalist.
A report by Jeyaraj published in the Daily Mirror on Saturday stated that the Sri Lankan agents nabbed KP and his driver Appu after the LTTE chief came out of his room in the First Tune Hotels to talk to a friend on the cellphone.
According to him, KP had gone to the hotel with no bodyguards or aides other than Appu. He was having a meeting with Balasingham Balendran, brother of Balasingham Mahendran alias Nadesan, the slain head of the LTTE’s political wing. Nadesan’s son, who had been staying with his uncle, Balendran,was also at the meeting.
During the conversation in the hotel room, KP got a call and he went out to the corridor, Jeyaraj added. When he did not return for more than 20 minutes, the two visitors from the UK began looking for him. Even Appu and the car had vanished from the car park. Initially, the visitors thought that KP would not have ventured very far as he had left behind his insulin. But when the search proved futile, they started calling all those in Kuala Lumpur and abroad who might know about his whereabouts. According to Jeyaraj, KP and Appu were taken to Colombo, either directly from Kuala Lumpur or via Bangkok.
He quotes unnamed “informed sources” working in the Colombo international airport at Katunayake saying that on Thursday night, Sri Lankan officials had whisked away two hooded and handcuffed men, presumably KP and Appu. As reported in The Island daily, Jeyaraj says that the operation was carried out by Sri Lankan intelligence, albeit with help from the agencies of other countries both within the Asian region and outside.
MALAYSIAN LINK: Sri Lankan authorities had for sometime felt that KP was functioning from Malaysia, rather than Thailand or
Singapore.
As Jeyaraj points out, the Lankan government had recently appointed a serving military officer, Maj Gen Udaya Perera, as Deputy High Commissioner in Malaysia, apparently to put pressure on the Malaysian government to arrest and hand over KP to Sri Lanka.
KP WAS NEGLIGENT ABOUT SECURITY: For sometime, KP had become negligent about his security. He had been giving media interviews openly, speaking on the phone frequently, and contacting world leaders and key members of the Tamil Diaspora openly on the question of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam that the LTTE had set up at his instance.
Speed up return of refugees, US asks Lanka: The US on Friday asked Sri Lanka not to keep the 2,80,000 Tamil war refugees in confinement but speed up their return to native villages in the northern part of the island country.
“People shouldn’t be confined against their will,” Reuters quoted Eric Schwartz, US Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees and Migration as saying in Washington. The Sri Lankan government had told the US that it planned to release, by the end of August, 75,000 of the 2,80,000 Tamil civilians.
DIFFICULTIES IN RESETTLEMENT: Sri Lanka has pledged to resettle the bulk of the displaced within six months, but it could be difficult, for two reasons: Firstly, there are thousands of land mines that have to be cleared across territory formerly held by the LTTE in the Wanni region.
18.2% vote in Jaffna polls: Voter apathy had resulted in only about 18 per cent of the electorate turning out to vote in the Jaffna Municipal Council polls held on Saturday. This is the lowest turnout in the history of Jaffna Municipal polls, political sources said. The turnout in the Vavuniya Urban Council and Uva Provincial Council elections was better, with 60 percent voting in Vavuniya, and 65 per cent in Uva.
