Unanswered Questions
About
Kadirgamar Assassination
By W.A. Sunil
and K. Ratnayake
26 August 2005
World
Socialist Web
It is now two weeks since Sri Lankan foreign
minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was shot dead by a sniper at his private
residence in Colombo late in the evening of August 12.
As far as the Sri
Lankan media and political parties are concerned, there is no doubt
that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) carried out the murder.
Within hours of the killing, senior police officials and military spokesmen
announced that the LTTE was responsible.
Sinhala chauvinist
parties, including the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and Jathika Hela
Urumaya (JHU), seized on the assassination, denounced the current ceasefire
with the LTTE and began agitating for demands that are tantamount to
a return to war. As part of their campaign, they have denounced anyone
who has failed to name the LTTE as the killers.
The Colombo press
has been full of analysis and stories, many of them simply
cooked up, about Kadirgamars murder and the police investigation.
All of them begin by assuming that the LTTE, which has publicly denied
any responsibility, was to blame. No alternatives have even been canvassed.
It is possible that
the LTTE did order the assassination. It has gained very little from
the ceasefire. Peace talks have been stalled since 2003 and efforts
to establish a joint tsunami aid mechanism with Colombo have been delayed
repeatedly. In the Eastern Province, its officials, offices and fighters
are being attacked regularly by a breakaway faction that receives covert
support from the Sri Lankan military.
However, the chief
beneficiaries of Kadirgamars assassination have been the JVP,
the JHU and sections of the security forces that have adamantly opposed
the aid agreement, the ceasefire and the entire peace process.
It is certainly possible that elements from these reactionary layers
could have hatched a conspiracy to murder Kadirgamar and pin it on the
LTTE so as to poison any renewal of peace talks.
Virtually no one
in Colombo has even raised the possibility. Before falling into line
with the clamour against the LTTE, President Chandrika Kumaratunga blamed
the killing on political foes opposed to the peaceful transformation
of conflict. The comment is particularly significant as the president
is well aware of the entrenched opposition inside the military as well
as the hostility of the JVP, which quit the ruling coalition in June
over her decision to sign an aid agreement with the LTTE.
Just as significant
are the reasons for Kumaratungas about-face. In last weekends
Sunday Times, the newspapers political editor, who has many high-level
political connections, revealed that Kumaratunga had come under sharp
behind-the-scenes criticism from the JVP for failing to blame the LTTE.
[H]ow can I blame the LTTE? I am the president and I must have
some evidence before I say such a thing, an exasperated Kumaratunga
told a ministerial colleague. Yet that evening [August 14] she appeared
on national television and declared that the LTTE was responsiblewithout
offering a shred of evidence.
Immediately after
the killing, the police announced that they had detained two TamilsLTTE
suspectsengaged in surveillance with a video camera near
Kadirgamars house a fortnight earlier. Since then, the police
investigation has produced no proof that the LTTE carried out the murder.
The limited evidence is circumstantial and inconclusive,
and raises more questions than answers. The killer or killers have not
been caught. Moreover, the police appear to have few leads.
The WSWS spoke to
Senior Police Superintendent Sarath Lugoda, director of the Colombo
Crime Division and a member of the investigative team. Asked about progress
in the case, he said: There is no clue still as to the persons
who did the crime. While he believed that the LTTE was responsible,
Lugoda added: [I]t is not possible to say whether it [the killing]
was done by the LTTE or any other group until the investigations are
over. He said that about 100 people had been questioned but no
one had been detained.
The WSWS also spoke
to the chief military spokesman, Brigadier Daya Ratnayake, who insisted
that there was no doubt that the LTTE killed Kadirgamar. When asked
about evidence, he admitted that it [the LTTEs responsibility]
has not been established. The investigations are being carried out in
an open mind.
In fact, the investigation
is being carried out with anything but an open mind. No
effort is being made to investigate the possible involvement of the
military, the police or various Sinhala communal organisations. Virtually
all of those who are being rounded up for interrogation are Tamils in
an effort to find a connection to the LTTE. Yet, despite two weeks of
inquiries, the police still have no clue as to the killers.
Lack of evidence
Based on what has
been made public, there are many unanswered questions about the Kadirgamar
assassination. Moreover, much of what has been leaked to the media is
either dubious or has been later shown to be misleading or false.
* Kadirgamar was
shot at about 10.45 p.m., after a swim in a pool at his home at Bullers
Lane in a well-to-do area of central Colombo. Captain Manatunga, head
of his security detail, has testified to a magisterial inquiry that
there were five security personnel around the pool and at the home.
He said he heard the shots, returned fire and then with the other guards
took the minister to the National Hospital.
Why was no effort
made to catch the killers? Even if Manatunga and the guards were preoccupied
with saving Kadirgamars life, why did other security forces take
no action? In such circumstances, the police and military rapidly establish
roadblocks to check vehicles. Yet after the murder of one of the countrys
most senior ministers, no roadblock was set up for at least two hours.
He [the assassin] had ample time to escape, a senior police
officer told the Sunday Island.
* Police revealed
that the shots came from a bathroom in the upper floor of a neighbouring
house just 35 metres from the pool. The gunman set up a rifle on a tripod
constructed out of aluminium pipes and fired through a small opening
in the bathroom window. A grenade was fired from a rocket launcher but
failed to explode. The launcher was found abandoned in nearby shrubs.
The gunman took the rifle and together with a possible accomplice was
able to get away. Police said that it was possible that the killers
may have been in the bathroom for some time.
Why was no effort
made to ensure that neighbouring houses were secure? Sri Lanka, which
has been embroiled in civil war for two decades, has a long history
of political assassination. Specially trained personnel from the Ministerial
Security Division (MSD) guard all ministers. The checking of possible
vantage points for gunmen is an elementary precaution that is routinely
performed around VIP residences or when VIPs are travelling in vehicles.
Why were these measures not taken for Kadirgamar who, next to the president
and prime minister, had the highest security priority?
* The owner of the
neighbouring house, Lakshman Thalayasingham, told a magisterial inquiry
on August 15 that the police arrived at his house somewhere between
1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on August 13that is, at least two hours after
Kadirgamars murder. The obvious question is: why did it take so
long after the murder to check the house from which the shots were fired?
The Colombo media
has made much of the fact that Thalayasingham is a Tamil. Unsubstantiated
stories have been circulated attempting to link him or his brothers
to the LTTE. One version is that he was a drunk who was drawn into the
plot with the LTTE with the offer of money. Another is that one of his
brothers living in London collected funds for the LTTE. Yet another
is that one of his servants was involved.
Thalayasingham told
the inquiry he did not use the upper floor of his home and lived mainly
downstairs with his invalid wife. He also said that, if he had been
asked, he would readily have allowed the security forces access to his
house. Significantly, the police have taken no action against him or
his brothers. Thalayasingham was grilled for hours and released. According
to media reports, police advised the government to seek his brothers
extradition but no action has been taken.
* Last weekend the
Sunday Times revealed that Kadirgamar had received a warning from a
Western intelligence agency via the countrys Directorate of Military
Intelligence of a plan to kill him. The brief one paragraph warning
said a plot to assassinate him was to be executed in August 2005,
the article stated. Yet no urgent efforts were made to beef up his security
detail, despite longstanding requests. Approval for additional
security was grantedironically on the day he was assassinatedeleven
months after the first request, it continued.
The Sunday Times
attempted to explain the lapse in security by reporting the comments
of a Tamil businessman with very close links to the LTTE,
whom Kadirgamar spoke with on occasions. The businessman had assured
the minister that the LTTE would not target him until he left office.
The article concluded that Kadirgamar had been lulled into letting down
his guard, but did not entertain the possibility that someone other
than the LTTE killed the minister. Moreover, why were those responsible
for Kadirgamars security duped? Who exactly did the Western
intelligence agency say planned to kill the minister and why was
no action taken to bolster his guard?
* The police initially
claimed that the assassin had used a snipers rifle. However, the
government analysts department confirmed to the WSWS that that was not
the case. The spent cartridges produced in court by police did not indicate
the use of such a weapon. An article in the state-owned Sunday Observer
last weekend added most surprisingly that Kadirgamar had
been killed by a sub-machine gun that had been stolen either from
the armed services or purchased from an arms dealer. In other
words, Kadirgamar was not killed with a specialist rifle but with an
automatic weapon of the type used by the Sri Lankan armed forces and
that is readily available throughout the country.
* A Daily Mirror
report on August 18 contained another piece of misinformation. It claimed
that police had found two cyanide capsules near his Thalayasinghams
residence. While making the obvious point that cyanide capsules are
an LTTE trademark, the article did not explain why the killers, if they
were LTTE, would leave the capsules behind. Surely if they feared capture
by police, they would take the capsules with them. As it turns out,
the story appears to have been fabricated from thin air and has since
been dropped by police.
In the immediate
aftermath of the assassination, military spokesman Daya Ratnayake declared
that the killing had all the hallmarks of the LTTE. In fact,
the opposite is the case. Suicide bombers, not snipers, have been the
hallmark of LTTE assassinations. Indian Prime Minster Rajiv
Gandhi and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, as well as several
high-level Sri Lankan ministers, were all killed by suicide bombers.
In 1999, Kumaratunga survived a similar attack. Unlike suicide bombings,
which require a high degree of commitment, there is no shortage of soldiers,
army deserters, paramilitary members and gangsters in Sri Lanka with
the necessary skills to fire a rifle to kill a ministereither
for political or financial motives.
The unanswered questions
all point in one direction. If those in charge of Kadirgamars
security were not bungling amateurs then the minister could well have
been the victim of a high-level plot involving the military or police.
After two decades of war, there is literally nothing that the sections
of security and intelligence apparatus would not do to further their
aims. If that is the case, it would also explain the lack of any progress
in the police inquiriesthe state apparatus is engaged in investigating
itself.
Whoever carried
it out, the murder has been immediately seized upon to crack down on
democratic rights. Virtually all the major established parties have
set aside their tactical differences to approve a state of emergency
giving the police and military extraordinary powers of arrest and detention.
The president has the right to impose media censorship and to ban protests
and rallies. These measures will not be used to track down Kadirgamars
killers. Above all they will be used against working peopleTamil,
Sinhala and Muslim alike.