Lanka worried over 'UN cover' for LTTE assassins
Suspected assassin passed Omanthai entry point before cops apprehended him
By Shamindra Ferdinando
The Island News
May 2, 2008
Security forces are investigating the possibility of the LTTE using cover of the United Nations and various other international organizations to facilitate its covert operations.
Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama Wednesday night expressed serious concern over the arrest of an armed UNDP worker at a joint army-police check point south of Vavuniya earlier in the day. The Minister said the issue would be raised with the relevant agencies.
The Defence Ministry said personnel at Irattaperiyakulam road block had trapped the UNDP worker carrying a micro pistol on Wednesday afternoon. The ministry said the suspect had been employed by the World Food Programme.
The suspect Thiagaraja Prabhakaran was a resident of Batticaloa, Military Spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said adding that at the time of the arrest he had been attached to the UNDP office at Kilinochchi.
He had been on his way to Batticaloa from Kilinochchi when police had zeroed-in on him.
The Brigadier said the magazine of the micro pistol recovered from the suspect had been secreted in the false bottom of one of his shoe.
Police sources said the suspect had entered the Vavuniya town through the Omanthai entry/exit point undetected. He could be an assassin tasked with targeting a senior police or a military official based in Vavuniya, they said.
Wednesday’s arrest revealed the likelihood of the LTTE using UN cover to mount operations in the South. "We expect the UN to take up this issue immediately," a senior Defence Ministry official said. The possibility of people on UN Payroll being assassins for an organisation proscribed in the US, UK and India was an extremely serious matter, he said.
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Senator Tom Coburn
Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security
340 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-2254 Fax: 202-228-3796
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