Prabhakaran’s body cremated

By Dianne Silva

The military yesterday said the body of LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran was cremated in Mullaitivu on Wednesday.

“His body was cremated in Mullaitivu and treated like the body of any other terrorist,” Military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara told yesterday.

The Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) Director General Lakshman Hulugalle confirmed the report saying: “His body was treated like that of any other terrorist and cremated. That is all  we have been informed,” he said.

However Minister Keheliya Rambukwella, the Government Spokesman for National Security and Defence on Tuesday told a news conference held to announce the identification of Prahabakaran’s body that certain legal proceedings had to be followed before disposing the bodies of leading LTTE figures like Prabhakaran, Pottu Amman, Soosai, Nadesan and others.

“You don’t expect a war hero’s funeral for a barbaric terrorist like Prabhakaran,” he also said at the same event in response to a question posed by a journalist.

Minister Rambukwella was not available to comment yesterday.

Brigadier Nanayakkara also said there was no information about the whereabouts of the remaining members of the Prabhakaran family. “We have not found their bodies and have no information about them,” he said.

SL promises to give India Prabha's death  certificate

New Delhi. Sri Lanka has promised to issue a certificate regarding LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran's death, to close the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, National security adviser M K Narayanan said on Thursday.

He said India was going by public statements from the Sri Lankan government that Prabhakaran, 54, had been killed in combat in the island's northeast earlier in the week and had no reason to doubt Colombo's announcement.

Narayanan told reporters here after talks with President Mahinda Rajapaksa that the Sri Lankan government had made a public announcement on Prabhakaran's death.

"We will go by that. We will of course wait for a death certificate from the government so that the Rajiv assassination case can be sort of closed," said Narayanan, who returned from Sri Lanka yesterday along with foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon.

"Beyond that, it is not possible for us to do anything. They have promised to give us a formal death certificate with regard to Prabhakaran," he said.

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