LTTE supremo V. Prabhakaran with his childhood friend and deputy Gopalasamy Mahendrarajah alias Mahattaya in Ariyalei, Jaffna, April 1,1990. Prabhakaran ordered the assassination of Mendrarajah for betrayal less than two years after this photo.Photo Courtesy – Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Crisis & National Security by Rohan Gunaratna
By: R. Jayadevan
(October, 15, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Well informed sources close to the Sri Lankan government confirmed, escapees of the assassination squad of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), following the killing (in 1994) of their commander Gopalasamy Mahendrarajah alias Mahattaya and butchering to death of the larger section of his battalion in a systematic way are infused into the Sri Lankan army some years ago and this group is engaged in operational duties with the army in the north.
The angered men of Mahattaya have become a powerful force for the government and are said to head hunt the LTTE men and sympathisers in the north and eliminate them ruthlessly.
Over 150 members loyal to Mahattaya are said to be operating in the north and in Vavuniya having been regularised into the army. Some of them are said to be married to Sinhalese women and are looked after well by the Sri Lankan government for their valuable service without which Sri Lankan forces are handicapped to undertake some of their tasks.
The LTTE kept Mahattaya under incommunicado detention in 1993/94 on the grounds that he was collaborating with the Indian intelligence Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) to assassinate its leader Velupillai Pirabakaran.
In 1993, Mahattaya was arrested together with his cadres and he was held in captivity for over a year until the international outcry abated. Amnesty international appealed to the LTTE to spare him from execution. But he was starved and finally succumbed to the bullets of the execution squad of the LTTE in 1994.
When I was released from incommunicado detention by the LTTE following British government intervention in 2005, I was met by LTTE’s Veerakathy Manivannan alias Castro’s intelligence men Aravinthan and Sivananthan at the reception centre Nanthavanam in Kilinochchi. They felt, I was bitter about my 62 days of incarceration in Vanni as my exchanges with them made them feel that I will go against them. In order to appease me, Aravinthan said, ‘Annai (Brother) I was in the Mahattaya’s group. When Mahattaya was taken into captivity all his cadres too were arrested and I too was held and tortured. Many of my colleagues were killed after being tortured to the extent of their finger and toe nails were pulled out with pliers. I escaped death because of intervention of a leader who was my friend from another battalion. I am telling you this to confirm how loyal I am to the LTTE despite escaping torture and death and deaths of my friends’.
When I heard this, I felt disgusted and thought this is not something I ever expected from a so-called national liberation movement fighting to win the rights for the Tamil people.
The situation created by the LTTE had made these elements loyal to Mahattaya to join the government forces and they are naturally reflecting their anger with venom in the Jaffna peninsula. Sources well known to me say these chaps are doing yeomen service to the Sri Lankan forces to penetrate into LTTE controlled areas and plant land mines and carryout operations as part of the deep penetration unit of the Sri Lankan forces.
These men even hate the cadres belonging to Douglas Devananda, Karuna and other groups fearing they will undermine their role with the army. Some of the killings blamed on the EPDP and other groups in the north are in fact the work of this secret and clandestine group. In the current killings in the Jaffna peninsula, this disgruntled loyalist of Mahattaya are playing their subservient role to the Sri Lankan army and are extending their inner most hatred towards the LTTE.
Many innocent Tamils have fallen easy pray to this disgruntled elements and I feel the Tamil people are harvesting what they have invested with the LTTE.
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