Pirapakaran Body Found??

[Raj_Paandy]

Sri Lanka says photo shows rebel leader is dead

Tamils dispute 'evidence,' saying photo could be one of Velupillai Prabhakaran's body doubles
May 19, 2009 06:39 AM
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Rick Westhead
South Asia Bureau

NEW DELHI–Sri Lanka's government broadcast gruesome pictures today showing the purported corpse of Tamil Tigers leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, even as a website linked to the terrorist group claimed he remains alive.

In the pictures, which aired on Sri Lankan state television, the portly 54-year-old Prabhakaran was shown wearing his combat fatigues and a dog tag with the serial number "001".

What appears to be a bullet wound was visible on his forehead and his head was partially covered by a cloth. Prabhakaran's laminated Tamil Tiger ID card was also broadcast and Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, the Sri Lankan army's spokesman, said authorities were "100 per cent positive" that it was Prabhakaran.

Still, Tamilnet, a website linked to the rebel Tigers, said the body wasn't Prabhakaran's, pointing to media reports yesterday that suggested his body was burned after his vehicle was destroyed with a rocket-propelled grenade. Some Internet bloggers wrote the body shown on TV did not appear to be burned and suggested it might be one of the several body doubles Prabhakaran has used.

"Our beloved leader is alive and safe. He will continue to lead the quest for dignity and freedom for the Tamil people," the Tigers' chief of international relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, said in a statement carried on Tamilnet.

Prabhakaran helped the Tigers become one of the world's most brutally effective, insurgencies, controlling close to one-third of the country with their own tax and court systems and a distinct time zone. The Tigers, who plotted the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, made popular the weapon of suicide bombers, sometimes rigging them to explode when the bomber raised his hands in mock-surrender.

Several western diplomats told the Star they believe the body is that of the Tigers' leader, the architect of a civil war that has raged in Sri Lanka for 26 years, claiming more than 70,000 lives.

Sri Lanka's government has promised for months that its war against the Tigers was winding down as the rebel group was pinned down in an ever-shrinking sliver of jungle in northeast Sri Lanka.

Speaking to Parliament yesterday, President Mahinda Rajapaksa promised the country would "come up with a home-grown political solution" to heal the divide between its Sinhalese Buddhist majority and ethnic Tamil minority, and would also seek international aid to rebuild the country.

The government, which has compared its victory to landing a man on the moon, has asked shops and homes to fly the country's bright red flag, which features a sword-brandishing lion, for a week to show their solidarity.

Reporters have not been allowed near the conflict zone, although some have been allowed to visit former battle areas on tours arranged by the military.

With the battle against the Tigers over, international scrutiny is sure to shift to conditions in Sri Lanka's internment camps, where civilians who fled the battle zone are now living. Surrounded by barbed wire, the camps have been called "welfare villages" by the government, and one aid worker today told the Star he's worried about water and sanitation issues.

"We have 250,000 people in these camps; they've quadrupled in size over the past week," the aid worker said. "It's a mind-boggling increase in size."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RED0EjlrVAE

[jerome]

May His Soul Rest in Peace

[SirNapper]

Time will tell....

[ygi25]

lives in our heart...

[puppy]

time will tell the truth, lets wait.

[thiyaguuu]

I just watching Headlines toady in that Mr Akbar raise too many questions i have too.

1. Is that necessary prabakaran want to carry a ID card to show all i am the prabakaran and leader of LTTE ?

2. SL army told they destroyed the ambulance while escaping if that is true why we couldn't see any flaming mark in his body ?

3. Why SL army hold a piece of clothe in his head part ?

4. Prabakaran while clean shave going to dead ? while in battle field ?

5. why SL army doesn't close Prabakaran eye's ?

6. If they shot is it only one bullet kill Prabakaran and it's in fore head ?

7. After capturing all locations why they couldn't find prabakaran body along with his son ?

I have too many questions time will gave the answer or some one have.

[Raj_Paandy]

Tamil doubts over rebel leader's death

The Sri Lankan military has released pictures of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran which it says prove conclusively that he is dead.

State and private stations aired footage of what they said was the body of Prabhakaran, along with what looked like his Tamil Tiger identity card and tag.

The army says his body has been positively identified with DNA testing.

But rebel sympathisers say questions remain about when and how he and other rebel leaders were killed, and over apparently contradictory statements in relation to his reported death.

Some among Sri Lanka's Tamil community and the influential Tamil diaspora doubt whether the rebel leader really is dead.

Ambushed

"The government is eager to present this as its Ceausescu moment - with photographs of the body of the tyrant widely released to give the impression that a defining moment has been reached," one Colombo-based diplomat told the BBC - drawing an analogy with the filmed execution of the Romanian dictator in December 1989.
"But there are questions surrounding Prabhakaran's identity tag. Is it really credible that a man reputed to have numerous lookalike doubles to avoid capture by the army would really carry this around with him?"

The army says Prabhakaran's bullet-ridden body was found on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon, his last stronghold in north-east Sri Lanka on Tuesday morning. Earlier it said his body was found on Monday morning.

Army spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara said the rebel leader had been shot in scrubland - probably in fierce fighting.

That statement contradicted an earlier announcement - made on state television but never verified by the army - that Prabhakaran's badly burnt body was discovered on Monday.

It said Prabhakaran had been killed after he was ambushed by commandos as he made a desperate attempt to break through government lines in an ambulance. He had been badly burnt when his vehicle burst into flames, it said.
State TV also said the rebel leader's body had been found with those of intelligence chief Pottu Amman and Soosai - the Tamil Tiger naval commander.

But on Tuesday the army said Soosai's death had not been confirmed.

Its version of events was first given by Gen Sarath Fonseka.

"The good news from the war front is that the body of the leader of the terrorist organisation which destroyed the country for the last 30 years, Prabhakaran, have been found by the army. We have identified the body," he said.

Gen Fonseka said the bodies of the rebels would be disposed without any formal funerals as "many of them were in bad shape".

Moments later, the private TV stations Derana and Swarnavahini showed soldiers surrounding what the troops said was Prabhakaran's body, with his distinctive moustache and regulation tiger-stripe camouflage fatigues.

Denial

The government argues that there are perfectly innocent explanations for the differing accounts of Prabhakaran's death - that in war time what is happening on the battlefront can sometimes get confused.

The BBC Tamil section's Jagadheesan Leklapoodi says that following the release of the photographs most Indian Tamil newspapers appear to have accepted that Prabhakaran is dead.

"But the Tamil population around the world will only grudgingly accept that is the case," he said.

"Prabhakaran is revered by some of them as the liberation hero fighting for their cause for over 30 years. Many of them will find it difficult to accept that he is no longer on the scene."

So far the most influential pro-rebel website, TamilNet, has not acknowledged the death.

Speaking before the release of the photos, a rebel official abroad denied Prabhakaran had been killed and said the Tamil Tiger leader was "alive and safe".

"He will continue to lead the quest for dignity and freedom for the Tamil people," Selvarasa Pathmanathan said in a statement posted on the pro-rebel TamilNet Web site on Tuesday.

But he offered no further details or evidence to support the claim, only drawing attention to what he said was Colombo's "treachery" in the killings of senior unarmed Tamil Tiger political wing leaders in the north-east, who he said had been shot as they carried white flags.

While the land fighting between the two sides has finished - the propaganda battle continues undiminished.

[Raj_Paandy]

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[brijeashprabu]

thanks for sharing