by Neena Gopal
In fact, Mahattaya’s and RAW’s plan to bump off Prabhakaran had come unstuck several times before. The first was when Mahattaya’s close aide, a man called Suresh, was unable to get the message in time to a hitman, Susilan, whom he had planted in Prabhakaran’s security detail. Suresh, who only got as far as Putur, was caught by the LTTE intelligence unit.
The second time, another LTTE activist based in Madras, a wounded one-legged operative named Engineer, was spotted in Jaffna by Pottu Amman and taken into custody. Engineer spilled the beans on the RAW plan to take over the LTTE by bringing Mahattaya out from the cold, eliminating Prabhakaran and installing the ‘big man’ in his place. Engineer had been approached by RAW after hundreds of LTTE cadres living in Madras had been picked up for questioning after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The Indian operatives persuaded him to go to Mahattaya and inform him to put the ‘Assassinate VP’ plan in action. Mahattaya, in turn, sent Suresh to get the hitman, Susilan, in Prabhakaran’s security detail to shoot the LTTE leader.
The third and most serious attempt to eliminate Prabhakaran was when Mahattaya used a back-up hit team of fourteen LTTE prisoners to kill him by planting a bomb in his sleeping quarters. The fourteen homecoming heroes were sent speedboats by the LTTE and were on their way to Jaffna after a purported jail break from Vellore jail! If it hadn’t been for a tip-off from an insider, the story of the LTTE may have ended there. The fourteen, detained by the LTTE intel unit, revealed the entire plan to their interrogators.
Adele, wife of former party ideologue Anton Balasingham, in her book The Will to Freedom2 writes:
Mahathaya and some of his close associates were arrested by the LTTE’s intelligence wing for conspiring to assassinate Mr Pirabakaran. In a massive cordon and search of his camp in Manipay—supervised by senior commanders of the LTTE—Mahattaya was taken into custody along with his friends. We were shocked and surprised by this sudden turn of events. Mr Pirabakaran, who visited our residence that day, told us briefly of a plot hatched by the Indian external intelligence agency—the RAW—involving Mahattaya as the chief conspirator to assassinate him and to take over the leadership of the LTTE. He also said that further investigations were needed to unravel the full scope of the conspiracy.
Mahattaya. The RAW mole that didn’t get away. Both a victim and an example of Indian intel’s bungling.
6
White Vans, White Flags
‘A FEW HOURS AGO ON Tuesday morning [19 May], our ground troops confirmed that they have recovered the dead body of the world’s most ruthless terrorist leader. I make this disclosure with responsibility and pleasure as millions of Sri Lankans as well as the army would be most delighted at this news.’
—Sri Lanka Army Chief Lt Gen. Sarath Fonseka
At 12.30 p.m. on 19 May, Gen. Fonseka exulted in the gory end of Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE, the man who had the blood of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on his hands, and that of countless others, Tamil and Sinhala.
On a sweltering day in October 2015, the guards at the spanking new army checkpoint at Vaduvakkal bridge paid little heed as our bright yellow Nano slowed and we took in the sight of the lone fisherman standing in the shallows, casting his net as he perched precariously on the scorched remnants of the bund that had once connected the two sides of the stunningly picturesque waterway.
A stone plaque nearby reads: ‘Waduwakkal (sic) causeway is and (sic) important segment which connects Mullaithivu and Pudukuduiruppu. Part of this had been destroyed by terrorist (sic) during the humanitarian operation to prevent advancing (sic) army towards Pudukuduiruppu. The area symbolizes the end of the 14 km long terrorist ditch cum bund which annexed (sic) the No Fire Zone (NFZ) from the rest of the area. The ruthless terrorist (sic) were adamant of holding the innocent civilians in the NFZ . . .’
It is the only sign, bad grammar notwithstanding, that this was the crossing where, on 16 May 2009, death rained down on thousands of Sri Lankan Tamil civilians trapped in the waterway on the last day of the final war against the Tigers led by their brutal leader, Prabhakaran.
Apart from the deeply disturbing documentary Killing Fields by the UK’s Channel 4, there are dozens of photographs and videos that record the panicked populace picking their way across the bund in a single file—men, women and children—non-combatants alongside belligerents in mufti, their meagre possessions piled on their heads, as they crossed this very waterbody to the so-called No Fire Zone.
Frantically sending text messages on their phones, the LTTE’s second rung was reaching out to contacts abroad, from India’s Tamil politicians in Chennai to United Nations (UN) officials in New York and former UN peace interlocutors in Oslo with one single purpose—to negotiate safe passage out of the war zone.
The LTTE militia had, in early April, turned thousands of civilians into human shields. But responding to the Sri Lanka Army urging them on megaphones to surrender, many would die when they did just that, mowed down in the crossfire, drowning in the knee-deep waters, their bodies trapped in the rocks below, their possessions, bags and clothing strewn across the blue waters, the white foam awash with their blood. The ones who survived the shelling died a thousand deaths after the battle. They were beaten, raped, taken away and shot dead in horrific acts of vengeance.
The Vaduvakkal death trap. Over 40,000 dead, said the UN Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka. ‘Tens of thousands lost their lives from January to May 2009, many of whom died anonymously in the carnage of the last few days,’ the document known as the Darusman Report states. Unofficial figures put the toll at 1,00,000. Official figures would later bring that down to a mere 15,000. Somewhere in between those figures lies the truth.
My companion that October day, Ramkumar, a young journalist from the Tamil newspaper Virakesari, cautioned me against taking photos too openly although other war tourists had slowed their vehicles in front of us, clicking pictures as they negotiated the brand-new, narrow bridge that reconnected both sides of the infamous waterway.
It had been six years since the event, and the young man, tellingly, was still worried about attracting undue attention.
Ever since the dramatic setback in the Wanni, as the war came to a head in April 2009, the LTTE forcibly drew the Tamil populace out of their houses, moving thousands to makeshift homes, placing them in tented cities in and around the insurgents’ bunkers in Mullaithivu in the hope that it would deter the Sri Lanka Army from attacking them.
As the army closed in, senior members of the LTTE who had concluded they couldn’t win the war began actively seeking surrender. From 10 May right up to 16 May, the senior leaders told the trapped civilians in the camps that they were free to go where they pleased, leaving the once tightly monitored checkpoints unmanned.
In a parallel effort to safeguard the civilians, UN peace negotiator Solheim had suggested to the Rajapaksa government that the international community, particularly the US and India, were willing to escort the innocent civilians and LTTE cadres who wanted to surrender to the safe zones.
The plan was to send a ship to the north and the east with UN officials as well as representatives of the international community on board, who would conduct a census, photograph and document all Tamils, divest them of their arms, take them to Colombo and release them later.
Solheim and the LTTE middleman KP were set to meet in Oslo to work out the details on 16 May. Unbeknownst to the thousands waiting in the Wanni, the meeting was called off at the very last moment by Prabhakaran. The suggestion had fallen on deaf ears. President Rajapaksa, visiting Jordan at the time, wanted the LTTE top leadership to surrender to him, and had little intention of letting hundreds of thousands of LTTE sympathizers walk free.
KP would later tell the media that the LTTE leadership was holding out for a conditional surrender that would see the Tiger leadership lay down their arms to a third party, not the Sri Lankan government, in return for a ceasefire and ‘negotiations for a political soluti
on’.
Neither the international community—nor Colombo—would have any of it. Nor, for that matter, would Prabhakaran, who had secretly reached out to Delhi through an intermediary to negotiate a separate getaway. Colombo, like the LTTE supremo himself, had other plans.
With Prabhakaran, or someone equally ill-advised, deciding to dispatch two suicide bombers when the mass exodus actually began on the morning of 16 May, hundreds needlessly perished in the fierce do-or-die battle, a journalist embedded with the Sri Lanka Army told me.
All those who wanted to surrender thereafter were looked at with even more suspicion by the Sri Lanka Army. They were asked to strip down, remove their outer clothing, divest themselves of all their possessions, and then come across the water carrying white flags. But it was a charade, a sham, a travesty.
For the army, every Tamil who had lived under the LTTE was suspect, seen as a closet Tiger sympathizer. The men, women and children connected in some way or another to Tiger cadres were, in their eyes, legitimate targets. No one batted an eyelid as the Tamils of the Wanni were taken into custody after publicly surrendering, only to disappear. The ‘take no prisoners’ directive was in place. This was the White Flag massacre. A day of infamy. There was no documentation, no paperwork, no record of who had been detained.
As the extremely disturbing videos broadcast by Channel 4 and the photographs in various publications and websites around the world show, young boys, girls barely into their teens, women, men, were simply marched behind the nearest truck. Some were raped, all were executed. The terror that marked their horrific and desperately sad last hours, fear written all over their faces, was the price they paid for being of Tamil origin, and living—willingly or under pain of death—under the boot of the LTTE.
The video of the Tamil television presenter Isaipriya’s terrified last moments captured the mindless brutality visited on hapless innocents in the dying moments of that war. Barely able to stand, her legs buckling, clearly pleading for her life after she had been raped, the TV anchor whom the soldiers reportedly mistook for Prabhakaran’s daughter, Dwaraka, is shown being dragged away by four Sri Lankan soldiers as a naked man walks alongside. Played on Tamil television stations across the world, the popular young woman’s gang rape and murderous end epitomized the senseless bloodlust that consumed the Sri Lanka Army as it ended the Tamils’ last grasp at freedom.
As the Sydney Morning Herald reported:
The war ended that day. The bodies of some of those who surrendered were found in the days following, but many were not. It is believed that none of those who surrendered, survived.
In the propaganda war unleashed by both sides, and in the bid to cover up the killing of non-combatants that the UN aid agencies would go on to baldly describe as ‘genocide’, the Sri Lankan media had reported that in the days prior to the last battle, civilians who had attempted to flee LTTE camps had reportedly been killed and their bodies kept on display to deter others from escaping.
Sri Lankan authorities insist that it is these photographs of people killed by the LTTE that were circulated. They claimed they were being unfairly blamed for the White Flag massacre by LTTE remnants deposing before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
All through the bloody surrenders, only a handful of his close aides were privy to the whereabouts of the LTTE leader. But as the Sri Lanka Army eliminated the last vestiges of opposition, clearing the mangroves and the lagoons of the militia, the hunt for Prabhakaran, whom the Tamils had blindly trusted to guide them to safety, was stepped up. The Sri Lanka Army’s special forces tracked him to various locations. His older son, Charles Antony, twenty-four, died as the army drew him out and killed him. If the son was so close, could the father be far behind?
After several false alarms during clearing operations, Prabhakaran’s body was found a day later on 17 May, in the flat marshes of the Nanthikadal lagoon just across the bridge. Lying alongside a handful of dead bodyguards, one side of his head blown off, his forehead riddled with bullets, his body lay muddied, blackened, his genitalia covered with a scrap of black cloth.
Nanthikadal. Not the Dunkirk the Tamil diaspora had built it up to be, but the final reckoning. Unlike Vaduvakkal, he didn’t even have an escape route into the sea. But diehard LTTE supporters refuse to believe Prabhakaran died in a hail of Sri Lanka Army bullets in these marshes on the day his body was found. Adding fuel to the speculation that he didn’t die there, but was inveigled into surrendering and shot, and his body placed later at Nanthikadal, the army chief Gen. Fonseka waited for another forty-eight hours before making the final announcement of his death.
The general—and the Rajapaksa government—clearly wanted to make doubly sure that the body in question was the LTTE supremo’s. It was only after Prabhakaran’s body was positively identified by two people—the cagey LTTE official spokesperson Dhaya Master who had escaped and been arrested while fleeing with civilians, and former LTTE Eastern Commander Col Karuna who identified Prabhakaran through his identity tag, 001, and the birthmark on his thigh—that the announcement was made.
Conspiracy theorists among the Tamil diaspora, however, insist that Prabhakaran was captured late on the night of 16 May as he thrashed through the marshes attempting to reach his submarine yard just up the coast. This is where, on the turn off to Puthukkudiyiruppu to the ocean, his Sea Tiger naval chief, Commander Soosai, had created a huge semi-submersible that could be launched from a specially built 70-foot-deep water shipyard. That was to have been his escape route. He had no intention of surrendering or getting caught. He wasn’t even wearing his cyanide capsule around his neck, and had only a handful of LTTE bodyguards with him.
The rusting, mangled, 30-foot sub that we saw at the submarine yard is a mere shell, a hull, armour-plated and clearly divided into a forward section, a living area, a storage space for cargo and an engine room. It didn’t look at all sea-worthy, but six years earlier, it may have been in better shape. Further down the road, in a veritable war museum to the LTTE that now attracts all manner of visitors, there were four mini-subs and several boats that the Sea Tigers had used for gun- and drug-running. Any one of them could have been Prabhakaran’s possible ticket to freedom—if he could have got there.
But hemmed in by the sea, backed into a lagoon and in the face of a relentless assault from an advancing army that could almost taste victory, a trapped Prabhakaran no longer had even the element of surprise left. He had only one obvious route—through the mangroves, where the Sri Lanka Army lay in wait for him to break cover. He simply didn’t stand a chance.
Since April 2009, several divisions of the Sri Lanka Army had been pushed into Mullaithivu, as had deep-penetration Special Forces, which steadily cleared the entire northern and north-eastern coastline, bunker to bunker, berm to berm, of every single LTTE base in a three-pronged move to close in on Prabhakaran.
On 19 April, Brig. Prasanna De Silva, heading the 55 Division, blew away almost the entire top rung of LTTE commanders in Pudumathalan. By 21 April, he had cleared the A9 highway as he swept from the west coast steadily into Mannar. In the final stages of the battle, it was Maj. Gen. De Silva (promoted after the LTTE was destroyed) who took charge of the key routes alongside Maj. Gen. Chargie Gallage of the 59 Division and Maj. Gen. Shavendra Silva of the 58 Division.
The LTTE which had, at the height of its power, held sway over 15,000 square kilometres of land across the north and the east, were squeezed into a mere sliver of land—42 square kilometres of marsh and mangrove. Prabhakaran, left with no strategy for a counter-attack or a plan to fight his way out, was trapped in the tiny stretch of land at Mullivayikal with no viable exit plan. The army only had to wait for him to break cover.
Sitting out in the Indian Ocean, with the full knowledge of the Sri Lankan naval forces, was the formidable Indian Navy which was working in tandem with the US Navy, using GPS and other navigational tracking devices to monitor the LTTE chief’s every move. Using the impressive resources at its command, the
Indian Navy was helping to direct the three-pronged attack by Sri Lankan forces that would force Prabhakaran and the handful of men who had stayed with him into the marshy lagoon, just inland, from where there would be no escape.
The firepower that the Sri Lanka Army unleashed over the next seventy hours was fierce. When it ended and the marshes became deathly quiet, the troops were sent to clear out the dead. It was then that Sgt Muthu Banda found a body that looked like Prabhakaran’s.
Six years later, we drove into a former LTTE hideout and training yard, barely a stone’s throw from Nanthikadal. Complete with a swimming pool and firing ranges and bunkers, tucked inside the Mullaithivu jungle, this was the Tiger leader’s preferred lair. The Sri Lankan soldiers had transformed it into a bustling armed camp. As we walked through, a Sri Lankan soldier who accompanied us, pulled me back to recount in broken English how he was right there when Prabhakaran’s body was found in Nanthikadal. He said that he and a group of soldiers dragged the body out of the marshes as soon as their fellow sergeant began to shout that the body was Prabhakaran’s.
Refusing to tell me his name as he was still in the army, all that the tall, young soldier would say was that while a sergeant found the body, it was a ‘colonel’ who identified it. It was a day he will never forget. ‘My mind went completely blank; I couldn’t think straight,’ he said. ‘But we all knew that this was it, that twenty-six years of war was over, that the man we had come to kill was dead, and yes, we did celebrate, we screamed, we shouted, we fired our weapons, we pulled at his body, shouting that he was dead. It was over,’ he said, smiling as he pointed to the LTTE camp they had taken over, and saying with a quiet and unmistakeable sense of triumph: ‘They are gone, we are here.’
