COLOMBO/ SRI LANKA: The Indian ocean nations highest court has barred former Tamil Tiger rebel leader Kumaran Pathmanathan, wanted by India in connection with the assassination of then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, from travelling abroad, a lawyer said.
Featured on the Interpol’s most wanted list on charges including arms smuggling and criminal conspiracy, Pathmanathan, who assumed supremacy of the almost defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, after their defeat by the Sri Lankan army.
Sunil Watagala, a lawyer who had sought Pathmanathan’s arrest, was quoted by the Reuters news agency, The Court of Appeal issued an order to the Controller of Emigration and Immigration to prevent him leaving the country.
Upon his capture in Southeast Asia by the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government Pathmanathan has been co-operating with the government was released in 2012.
The coalition headed by Sri Lanka’s new president, Maithripala Sirisena, pledged before his election victory last month to take legal action against Pathmanathan if it won.
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a Marxist party that had backed Sirisena for president, then filed a petition seeking Pathmanathan’s arrest.
Pathmanathan had been the LTTE’s chief arms procurer and run its global fund-raising network as it fought to carve out a separate state for minority Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Indias then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and 14 others were killed on May 21, 1991 when a suicide bomber blew herself up after touching his feet at an election campaign rally (prior to the parliamentary elections), in Sriperumbudur, near Madras (now Chennai).
The 14 victims included a photographer who had captured the assassin and Gandhi on film.
The assassination was carried out by Thenmozhi Rajaratnam alias Dhanu, who was associated with the LTTE, a separatist organisation from Sri Lanka.
The assassination was seen as retaliation for Gandhi having sent Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka in 1987.
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