Missed Opportunity: Three Members Comeback with MT Pockets

With Thailand’s controversial decision to disown the recent arrest of LTTE frontliner Tharmalingam Shanmughan alias Kumaran Padmanathan alias KP Sri Lanka has missed a golden opportunity to unravel the LTTE’s vast global procurement network built on what a military official called ``a foundation laid by India.’’

A three- member official delegation from Sri Lanka that flew to Bangkok after reports of the arrest of KP has returned to Colombo with only a declaration from Thai authorities that he has not been "arrested."

The delegation comprised a senior intelligence official, an investigator from the Criminal Investigation Department and an official from the Attorney General's Department. They were told to proceed to the Thai capital by Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, following reports that Thai authorities had taken in Pathmanathan, head of the LTTE Military Procurement Wing.

Despite media reports, both in Colombo and abroad about Pathmanathan's arrest, Thai authorities have vehemently denied the incident. The first denial last Tuesday came from officials in the Thai Foreign Office. Joining in later were spokesmen from the Thai Police.

Both Colombo-based diplomatic and intelligence sources believe Pathmanathan was in fact taken in to be interviewed and the use of the term "arrested" was inappropriate. According to Diplomatic source, "the Thai Government was upset Sri Lanka did not maintain confidentiality over this move until matters were sorted out."

However , Mr. B. Raman a former head of R&AW and Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, has been questionnaires in his latest article on KP to the Lanka Guardian, “has a similar thing happened in the case of KP? Have the Americans whisked him out of Thailand without his being formally arrested in order to question him on the LTTE's links with Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda jihadi organisations such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) of Pakistan and Abu Sayyaf of the Philippines? In the last two years, two operations of the LTTE to procure and smuggle arms and ammunition, including surface-to-air missiles, from the US have been neutralised by the FBI, which would be interested in questioning KP about them.”