Top LTTE leaders killed while trying to surrender

Posted by Lasantha Janaka on Sunday, May 24, 2009 Comments: (0)

Two top Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leaders had tried to negotiate their surrender but were killed by the Sri Lankan Army while "holding white flags", a Sunday Times report said.

According to the paper, Balasingham Nadesan, political leader of the Tamil Tigers, was in touch with its correspondent till late night on May 17 by satellite phone from the tiny strip of jungle and beach on the northeast coast of Sri Lanka where the Tigers had been making their last stand.

"We are putting down our arms," Nadesan told Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin.

Amid machine gun fire in the background, he told Colvin: "We are looking for a guarantee of security from the Obama administration and the British government. Is there a guarantee of security?"

Nadesan and Seevaratnam Puleedevan, the head of the Tigers' peace secretariat, were holed up with a group of 300 fighters and their families, many of them injured.

The Times correspondent established contact with the UN special envoy in Colombo, Vijay Nambiar, through highly placed British and US officials and passed on the Tigers' conditions for surrender, which he was to relay to the Sri Lankan government.

According to the paper, at 5.30 a.m. Sri Lankan time on May 18 Colvin got in touch with Nambiar in Colombo and told him that the Tigers had laid down their arms.

Nambiar said he had been assured by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa that Nadesan and Puleedevan would be safe. "All they have to do is hoist a white flag high," Nambiar said.

Colvin by now had lost touch with Nadesan. She contacted a Tamil Tiger sympathiser in South Africa and asked him to send the message to Nadesan - hold a white flag.

A Tamil who was in the group with the two leaders and managed to escape the war zone described what happened.

The source, who spoke to an aid worker, said Nadesan and Puleedevan walked towards Sri Lankan Army lines with a white flag in a group of about a dozen men and women. He said the army started firing with machine guns at them, the news report said.

Nadesan's wife, a Sinhalese, yelled in Sinhala at the soldiers: "He is trying to surrender and you are shooting him." She was also shot down.

The source said all in the group were killed. He is now in hiding, fearing for his life.

The Sri Lankan military decimated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) May 18 by killing its entire leadership including chief Velupillai Prabhakaran. The death of Prabhakaran brought the curtains down on a quarter-century old insurgency for a separate Tamil homeland in the country's northeast.

Tamil Tigers confirm leader's death

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The government released footage of Prabhakaran's body after speculation he could still be alive [AFP]

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have confirmed their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, has been killed.

"We announce today, with inexpressible sadness and heavy hearts that our incomparable leader and supreme commander ... attained martyrdom fighting the military oppression," Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the LTTE's head of international relations, said in a statement on Sunday.

The Tigers said Prabhakaran had been killed on Tuesday during fighting between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan military and declared a week of mourning.

The military had previously announced Prabhakaran, 54, was shot on Monday while travelling in a small convoy of vehicles in a bid to escape the final battle between the two sides.

'Final request'

The LTTE statement read: "For over three decades, our leader was the heart and soul and the symbol of hope, pride and determination for the whole nation of people of Tamil Eelam,"

"Since the failure of the peace process and the escalation of the war forced upon the Tamil people, the LTTE was faced [sic] to confront the Sri Lankan military that was supported by the world powers.

"This deliberate bias and position taken by the international community severely weakened the military position of the LTTE.

"Our leader confronted this threat without any hesitation. He would not waver in his desire to be with his people and fight for his people till the end.

"His final request was for the struggle to continue until we achieved the freedom for his people.

"His legend and the historical status as the Greatest Tamil Leader ever are indestructible," Pathmanathan said in the statement.

Body 'cremated'

The Sri Lankan authorities have not published a post mortem examination report or officially confirmed how or when he died.

A government spokesman said on Tuesday that the body would be given to an undertaker, but General Sarath Fonseka, Sri Lanka's army chief, told the privately-run Sunday Rivira that the body had been cremated and his ashes thrown in the sea.

Fonseka said Pottu Amman, the LTTE intelligence chief, and Prabhakaran's wife, Mathiwadini, were among the dead, but have yet to be officially identified.

The government released footage of Prabhakaran's body for the first time on Tuesday after a pro-LTTE website, Tamilnet, denied the government's announcement that he had been killed.

Sri Lanka said Sunday it would not allow aid workers complete access to civilians who remain held in camps after the conflict, saying LTTE remnants still remained among the refugees.

Aid restrictions

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, on a visit to a camp housing 200,000 Tamils, had called for his staff to be given "unhindered access" to those displaced in the decades-long war that ended last week.

"His legend and the historical status as the Greatest Tamil Leader ever are indestructible"

Selvarasa Pathmanathan, LTTE international relations chief

The government said that "as conditions improved, especially with regard to security, there would be no objections to such assistance".

Ban, who toured the Menik Farm facility on Saturday, described the conditions as overcrowded and the detained civilians as "badly in need of food, water and sanitation".

The government has described the camps as "welfare villages" and says it wants to resettle all displaced civilians as soon as possible.

But Tamil activists say they are "concentration camps" with inmates penned in behind barbed wire.

During his visit, Ban urged Rajapakse to probe alleged human rights violations committed during the defeat of the Tamil separatists, a joint statement on Sunday said.

The UN estimates that up to 7,000 civilians have been killed in fighting since the beginning of the year.