The Ceylon News

Investigative Report by Hassina Leelarathna

‘Nothing international about the all-Tamil ‘International Medical Health Organization’(IMHO)

IMHO is spreading LTTE propaganda, raising funds, establishing conduits to support LTTE – under guise of ‘healing & reconciliation’

· IMHO’s ‘material support’ to LTTE included ‘Thileepan medical centers’ and ambulances that were operated by the Tigers.

· IMHO board members are also TRO operatives and run other LTTE fronts such as the Tamils of Northern California (TNC). Documented evidence shows hundreds of thousands of dollars being given to the TRO by TNC and other fronts.

· IMHO is not a registered NGO in Sri Lanka. It ‘partnered’ with Centre for Healthcare (CHC) in LTTE ‘capital’ Killinochchi and now claims to be partnering with the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA) – which works hand in glove with Norwegian NGOs Berghof Foundation and FORUT whose directors have been deported for working with the LTTE to undermine Sri Lanka’s sovereignty.

IMHO founder Sujanthy Rajaram spread LTTE propaganda by alleging ‘chemical warfare by Sri Lankan military’ on the website of ‘Tamils for Obama’ – identified by KP alias Kumaran Pathmanathan as another LTTE front that supported the Obama campaign.

GOSL & the Sri Lankan mission in Los Angeles have refused to endorse IMHO’s fundraiser to be held August 22 in Southern California.

Following the victory of the Sri Lankan army over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant outfit once considered by many as an invincible force, Pakistan has asked Sri Lanka to provide training to its military personnel.

The government of Pakistan wants the Sri Lankan military to train its personnel in counter-insurgency operations, the Commander of the Sri Lankan Army, Lt-Gen Jagath Jayasuriya, told journalists on Thursday.

He said several other countries had also sought information about the strategy and tactics adopted by the Sri Lankan armed forces to decimate the LTTE in just three years of intense fighting.

Pakistan helped Sri Lanka fight the LTTE by supplying arms when other countries had put an embargo on arms sales to the country.

Adm Wasantha Karannagoda, a former naval chief who is currently the National Security Adviser, had said at an international naval seminar in the UK that the strategies and tactics used by the Sri Lankan navy to tackle the LTTE’s naval arm could be of use to other navies because in the conflicts of the future navies would be facing not battleships and destroyers but small and fast boats of non-state rogue navies which could be indulging in insurgencies, piracies and trafficking of various kinds.

Sri Lankan Tamil refugees and expatriates in Switzerland contributed the most to the LTTE’s war chest, the captured LTTE leader, Selvarasa Patmanathan alias KP, reportedly told his interrogators in Colombo, the weekly Nation reported in its latest issue.KP told Nation that he was not aware of the total collection received by the war chest as the LTTE founder V Prabhakaran had entrusted those functions to others. However, he confessed that the bulk of the money came from Switzerland, followed by UK, South Africa, Australia and Canada, the paper reported on Sunday.The Island daily reported on Monday that KP had tried to send an arms-laden ship to the Mullaitivu coast in the closing stages of the war. The ship was due to land on May 20, but since the war ended on May 18, the vessel had to return.Lankan officials grilling KP had been asking him about the four vessels which the LTTE’s front organisations were using for legitimate trade in the South China Sea. Lanka could act against these vessels if their owners had any connection with the LTTE.Lankan investigators reportedly dismissed KP’s claim that he had convinced Prabhakaran to give up the military option and go for political talks with the Lankan government in the closing stages of the war. KP had been in the business of supplying weapons to the LTTE till the very last moment, Sri Lankan officials think.KP WILL FIRST BE TRIED IN LANKA: According to Nation, Lankan officials had made it clear that KP would have to face the judicial process in Lanka before he was handed over to India for investigations into his role in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. It is learnt that India may not want the custody of KP, as he was not directly involved in the plot to kill Rajiv Gandhi. He was not charge-sheeted by the Special Investigating Team of the CBI in 1992. But India may want to know about the LTTE’s links with international arms smuggling and drug traffickers.US pledges food worth $15 million: The U S Agency for International Development has pledged food worth $15 million to support the early return of people displaced by the war in north Lanka.

Tamil Tiger rebels have acknowledged their new leader has been arrested in Malaysia and handed over to the Sri Lankan military.

Notably, there is a contradiction regarding the place of LTTE chief’s arrest. According to rebels, Selvarasa Pathmanathan was arrested in Malaysia, but Sri Lanka's Defence Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had earlier claimed that the Tiger rebel was detained in Thailand.

In a statement, LTTE says that Selvarasa Pathmanathan was captured near a hotel on Wednesday by the Malaysian Royal Intelligence Corps.

The confirmation by rebels came hours after the Sri Lankan Defence Ministry verified the reports that Pathmanathan, who was appointed the leader of the Tamil Tigers following the killing of LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran, has been arrested.

"Most wanted LTTE terrorist for Interpol and local security divisions Kumaran Padmanadan alias KP has been taken into custody by Sri Lankan law enforcement authorities," it was reported on the Defence Ministry website.

"The suspect is known to be responsible for cross-border terrorist activities of Liberation Tiger of the Tamil Elam (LTTE)," it added.

Sri Lanka's military spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara says Pathmanathan was brought to Sri Lanka and is being questioned.

Pathmanathan has been sought by Interpol for smuggling arms for the Tamil Tigers.

As the new rebel leader, Pathmanathan said the LTTE had decided to silence their guns and would try non-violent methods to achieve their goal of a separate state for the Tamil minority, BBC reported.

Sri Lanka's military says it is interrogating Pathmanathan.

Meanwhile, Nanayakkara declined on Friday to say where and when Pathmanathan was captured.

Pathmanathan took over as the LTTE's leader after Prabhakaran was killed on May 18 in the island's north. Prabhakaran's killing had brought the curtains down on one of the world's bloodiest ethnic conflicts that ravaged this nation.

New Delhi: The new chief of the Tamil Tigers who is now in Sri Lankan custody was one of the rare few outside the group's intelligence set-up who knew months earlier that former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was to be assassinated.

Without taking Gandhi's name, Selvarasa Pathmanathan alias Kumaran Pathmanathan alias KP told a Sri Lankan Tamil in Tamil Nadu in November 1990 that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) would soon target the "Indian leadership".

KP - as he is widely known - made the explosive revelation over telephone from a foreign country six months before a LTTE woman suicide bomber finally killed Gandhi at an election rally near Chennai May 21, 1991.

But KP, in contrast to a section of media reports, is not an accused in the Gandhi case and is not directly linked to the killing. He is merely a suspect in the eyes of the Multi Disciplinary Monitoring Authority (MDMA), which is still probing the larger conspiracy angle related to Gandhi's killing.

KP's advance knowledge of the assassination has intrigued Indian security agencies.

Since secret decisions of the nature of Gandhi's killing were shared in the regimented LTTE on a strict need to know basis, questions have been asked how and why he came to know about the plot.

One logical explanation was the LTTE's absolute dependency on KP, who was the key international arms procurer for the Tigers, a role he performed with aplomb. He became the LTTE chief after the death of the group's founder leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in May this year.

The LTTE may have felt that KP needed to be told in advance since the international ramifications of Gandhi's killing might jeopardise the carefully laid out global network aimed at procuring arms and ammunition.

Another senior LTTE member outside its intelligence unit who too knew about the Gandhi killing in advance was Tiruchi Shanthan, who in 1990-91 was in charge of all Tiger operations in Tamil Nadu.

So, questioning KP could yield enormously useful information to India since the pellets, explosives and the Singapore Fragmentation Grenade (SFG) used in the assassination reached the LTTE courtesy the arrested man though they were meant for the war in Sri Lanka and not for the Gandhi killing per se.

However, if India decides to ask its security agencies to question KP, those picked for the task should be well clued into LTTE affairs.

There is a group of dominantly low-key officers in India, both serving and retired, who have followed the Tigers for decades. But it has been seen in the past that qualified people often get sidelined on such missions.

KP's link to the Gandhi case is a small part of the mammoth role he played in building up the LTTE since 1983. Just as there could have been no LTTE without Prabhakaran, there may have been no Prabhakaran minus KP.

KP never underwent military training. When he was in India, Prabhakaran decided in 1984 to set up an ultra secret group within the LTTE to buy and transport war material from around the world. KP was picked for the job.
KP rose to the occasion. A man with natural talent for forgery and disguises, he soon acquired multiple identifies as well as passports (including Indian) and slowly built up the LTTE's procurement division.

He set up several front companies (in which he was a master) in several countries to smuggle gold and narcotics. He used the money to buy war material. In India, he secretly operated a dairy farm in Tamil Nadu in the 1980s.

He also set up a secret shipping network for the LTTE that was used to transport weapons brought abroad to Sri Lanka. He operated in total secrecy, reporting only to Prabhakaran.

It is courtesy KP that the LTTE gained thousands of tonnes of arms and ammunition, including advanced defence systems, anti-tank weapons, sniper rifles, mortars, rocket propelled grenades, ammunition, night vision devices, metal detectors, fibreglass boats as well as sophisticated radio and wireless communications.

Except in the last few years when he was known to be mostly in Malaysia, KP was constantly on the move in the 1980s and 1990s, always a step ahead of all his pursuers. One Indian official said he was "the most elusive of all pimpernels".

Using several identifies, he visited Lebanon, the Thai-Cambodia border, France, Britain, Sweden, Greece, Cyprus, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Myanmar, Malaysia and Australia. He was known to have been in Britain in 2006 when LTTE ideologue Anton Balasingham died.

It was due to KP that the LTTE got its first small aircraft.

However, KP's meteoric rise generated jealousy in the LTTE. Prabhakaran sidelined the man from 2003, bringing in place another loyalist known by his nom de guerre Castro, who was no match for KP's natural talents.

As the LTTE began to sink, Prabhakaran realised the folly and resurrected KP this year. It was too late. Many LTTE watchers believe that Prabhakaran might still be alive if only KP's wings had not been clipped six years ago.

The new head of the Tamil Tigers, the separatist group defeated by the Sri Lankan military after a 25-year war, has been arrested in Thailand, Sri Lanka's military said on Thursday.

Selvarajah Pathmanathan was wanted on two Interpol warrants and took the reins of the remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) after their defeat in May.

"He has been arrested in Bangkok. That is all we know at the moment," military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

There was no immediate comment from Thai officials.

Pathmanathan, better known as KP during his decades running the LTTE's arms and smuggling networks, took over as the public leader of the separatist group after Sri Lanka's military announced victory on May 18 after a 25-year war.

He was the first LTTE official to acknowledge the death of Tiger founder and leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran, who was killed in the closing days of Sri Lanka's offensive on a narrow spit of northeastern coast where they had surrounded the rebels.

Security experts had long suspected Pathmanathan was hiding in southeast Asia.

A Western diplomat assigned to Sri Lanka met him somewhere in the region earlier this year, part of an effort to persuade the LTTE to surrender in the face of an imminent defeat and free civilians they were holding by force in the war zone.

Pathmanathan was believed to have earned millions of dollars procuring weapons for the Tigers and running smuggling operations from bases across the region including Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar. Security experts say he had multiple passports.

Some estimates said the LTTE earned between $200-300 million from extortion, weapons sales and drug smuggling. Analysts said part of a brief struggle for Prabhakaran's mantle after the war was to take control of its financial assets.

After the war, Pathmanathan said the LTTE would try non-violent means to achieve its goal of a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils. Among his first initiatives was to try to form a transnational government-in-exile. (Editing by Richard Williams)