KP’s arrest:

Checkmate of LTTE

Wijitha Nakkawita

The arrest and extradition of KP, the LTTE’s top international operative augurs well for bringing lasting peace and amity to all Sri Lankans.

A mystery figure

The enigmatic arms and drug smuggler represented the other elusive face of the LTTE that he represented with the support of certain western nations and a large percentage of the Sri Lankan Diaspora that willingly or unwillingly came to support the unethical and illegal drug and arms smuggling with the assistance of certain foreign powers or drug barons abroad.

Who KP was and what he was doing from 1990 would describe his modus operandi capabilities and the position he held with the Tiger boss V. Prabhakaran.

He spoke a number of languages including Sinhala, English, French and was a student of the Jaffna University when he joined the terrorist group TELO in 1980. The very next year, he was involved in a bank robbery at Neerveli in the North and the next year he joined the LTTE and soon became a close confidante of Prabhakaran.

He started moving from country to country though some reports said he left Sri Lanka in 1990. It was crystal clear that KP was one among the first groups of youth to be lured into the murderous terrorists that the late TULF leader A. Amirthalingamurged to get assistance and arms from “Foreign Organizations”,

Terror acts

In 1982 he was arrested in Mumbai smuggling Indian Rs. 4 million worth of gold from Singapore. He was again arrested in Chennai for smuggling gold to India in 1984 but during this time he was involved in a number of international assignments to raise funds, smuggle drugs, launder money and make the LTTE arms smuggling more effective by purchasing ships. The man was moving from country to country in different names and had more than 10 aliases and several forged passports with his picture affixed under different names.

He was known as Kumaran Pathmanathan, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, Selvaraja Dharmalingam. Selvaraja Kumaran and was born in Kankesanturai in April 1955.

He had his school education at Thelippalia Maha Vidyalayam and entered the Jaffna University. It was as a university student he joined the terrorists but his outward smooth appearance and his language skills often had deceived people, especially foreigners.

He next moved over to Malaysia where there is a Tamil community and floated a shipping company in 1987 and purchased the first ship the next year.

In fact he was so close to Prabhakaran that he was seen seated next to the LTTE boss in his wedding photograph taken in Chennai.

He not only was the closest confidante of the boss but he trusted KP so much that in 1990 KP flew back to Sri Lanka in an Air Lanka aircraft from India with Madivadini, wife of Prabhakaran.

International operative

Of course one should remember that then President R. Premadasa was a friend of the LTTE and even if Prabhakaran and his top aides flew to Colombo from India they would have been allowed to enter the country and probably go to the Wanni in a taxi hired from the Airport.

KP flew back to London again in 1990 was arrested at the Heathrow Airport as he was travelling on a forged Indian passport.

The operations he was engaged in for the LTTE as their international head and shipping, laundering money, smuggling drugs and arms was a job that could not have been accomplished without the help of certain western countries and even governments but the irony of fate was that he proclaimed himself the LTTE leader in a transnational government’ – whatever that means – just some weeks after he announced that Tiger boss Prabhakaran was still living even after it was well known that the boss had died in the battlefield in the North.

The Sri Lankan Government and Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama had made a special effort with the international community to get this slippery operative arrested but surprisingly on May 24, KP told the BBC that Prabhakaran was dead and he, KP was appointed the Head of the LTTE as to Prabhakaran’s successor .

Hypocrisy

Yet, the hypocrisy of most western nations that allowed terrorists to move freely on their soil while pledging to fight against terrorism was the main reason why KP and other LTTE operatives abroad continued smuggling arms and drugs under the nose of the most such leaders. As Professor Rajiva Wijesinha put it once the West had a “Self opinionated preconception that the West knows what a healthy outcome is.”