For India LTTE leader Prabha is “confirmed dead” after one year

CHENNAI: The LTTE supremo, Velupillai Prabhakaran, is no more the prime accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. In the first official acknowledgment by India of the LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran’s death, a designated court for Tada cases in Chennai has dropped all charges against him, on the basis of a CBI report.

“The case against the absconding accused A1 Prabhakaran, A2 Pottu Amman alias Shanmuganathan Sivasankaran is hereby dropped and the charges against them ordered abated,” ruled the designated judge, K Dakshinamurthy, a couple of weeks ago.

The case and charges against Prabhakaran’s trusted lieutenant and LTTE intelligence chief Pottu Amman were dropped based on the report filed by the CBI’s Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA), which was formed in 1998 to probe the wider conspiracy behind Rajiv’s 1991 assassination. Under Indian law, charges against the accused abate automatically on their death.

On 18 May last year, capping the defeat of LTTE, the Lankan government declared the death of Prabhakaran in battle. Though photographs of the bullet-riddled body of the LTTE leader were released to the world, the island-nation had not yet issued a formal death certificate authenticating his death. In the case of Pottu Amman, Lanka has not furnished any photos or certificates, fuelling rumours all over the Tamil Diaspora that the two were still alive.

However, last year, when a case pertaining to the 1989 assassination of the moderate Tamil politician

A. Amirthalingam came up for hearing, the Lankan police filed a report declaring that Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman were dead.

About six months ago, the MDMA filed a report based on the Lankan government’s disclosure, stating that the case could be closed as the two LTTE leaders were dead, as acknowledged by Sri Lanka itself. (Times of India)

Lanka to indict 1,000 ex-LTTE cadres on charges of terrorism

The government will indict some 1,000 former LTTE cadres in custody on charges of involvement in terrorism during the nearly three decades’ ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka that came to an end last May. D. E. W. Gunasekara, Rehabilitation and Prison Reforms Minister, said these former LTTE cadres are being held on charges of their involvement in terrorism.

According to the ColomboPage online, the government has decided to indict some 1,000 former LTTE cadres who are currently in custody and release 23 former women LTTE cadres.

Gunasekara said the government has so far rehabilitated and released some 4,460 former LTTE cadres including 304 women and girls.

The Sri Lankan forces crushed the rebels in May 2009, ending three decades of civil war that killed between 80,000 and 100,000 people. The government continues to screen refugees in military-run camps for rebel fighters.

The defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels ended the group’s quarter-century armed struggle for a separate state.

According to U.N. and rights watchdog reports, more than 7,000 civilians were killed in fighting between mid-January and May 2009, when the military routed the rebels.