By D.B.S. Jeyaraj
(CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK)
QUESTION: Thank you for relating these details about these important events of the recent past. Your input provides fresh insight into these matters. But now I want to ask you about the present.
Gotabhaya Rajapakse ~ pic courtesy: businesstoday.lk
Let me start with your relationship with this government particularly the Defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse.
By D.B.S. Jeyaraj
(CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK)
Question: What happened finally to your plan of rescuing Prabhakaran and his family by helicopter? Why did the plan not take off?
Answer:
It’s a very sad story………
After Prabhakaran’s son Charles Anthony asked me to rescue his family members by air I devised a plan and made preliminary arrangements. I arranged for a ship to be kept waiting at a far –off port beyond the reach of the Sri Lanka navy. I also made arrangements to buy a second-hand helicopter from an Ukrainian contact.
by D.B.S. Jeyaraj
Question: So how did the return occur? How and why did you re-join the movement?What was your role during the last days of the war?
Answer: That’s another long story.
I was now out of the movement and leading a quiet life in Thailand with my family.I had no idea of returning to the movement though my wife felt that I would always go back if asked by Prabhakaran himself.
By D.B.S.Jeyaraj
(Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was killed on August 12th 2005. This article written in August 2005 for “The Sunday Leader” is reproduced here to commemorate the fifth anniversary of his death.It has been shortened)
Lakshman Kadirgamar ~ (April 12, 1932 – August 12, 2005)
Independence dawned for Sri Lanka then Ceylon on February 4th 1948. The union jack was lowered and the national flag raised at the stroke of midnight. Even as the flag fluttered proudly four young athletes carrying flaming torches entered the square and ran up the steps of Independence hall. Together they lit the lamp of freedom.
By D.B.S. Jeyaraj
It was one year ago on August 5th 2009 that Thambiaiya Selvarasa Pathmanathan alias “KP” was taken into custody in Kuala Lumpur at First Tune Hotel on 316 Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman road.The former chief arms procurer of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam(LTTE) was brought to Colombo the following day.
