Balasingham, who is living with a transplanted kidney, is already a heart and diabetic patient and has been living in London with his Australian-born wife Adale Anne.
Sri Lankan navy seize explosives, detonators in Jaffna
N Sathiya Moorthy goes back in time to dig up three cases that may not have any citation in legal text-books or lawyers' ready-reckoners quoted before courts but which may still have a bearing on the current case against the arrested activists.
The editor of a Tamil daily was picked up by the police on Thursday for "questioning" in connection with the news on last week's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam aircraft attack on Colombo that targeted a government building.
Sri Lanka's Defence Ministry claimed that six attack boats, including two suicide craft, of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were destroyed during a heavy sea battle erupted on Wednesday morning in seas south off Delft.
'The allegations against the Government of Sri Lanka appear to be unsubstantiated and devoid of corroborative evidence. There is a track record of vested interests endeavouring to bring the government of Sri Lanka into disrepute, through fabricated allegations and concocted stories,' The Guardian quoted a Sri Lankan foreign affairs ministry statement as saying.
Mahinda Rajapaksa's re-election as Sri Lankan president has come as a disappointment for the Tamil diaspora, which is still reeling from Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels' defeat in the country's civil war last year. The influential community of Tamils living overseas now doesn't know about what role it should play in their homeland, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
A pro-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam parliamentarian has underlined his party's resolve for an 'autonomous rule' for Tamils in Sri Lanka, claiming that Tamil National Alliance's support for opposition presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka was extended only after getting him to agree to those conditions.
Dismissing as "engineered rumours", the Sri Lankan government's assertion that Vellupillai Prabhakaran had been killed in the fighting in the north, the Tamil Tigers have claimed that the LTTE supremo is alive.
There was no immediate reaction from the LTTE in this regard.
Over 67 Tamil Tigers and three soldiers were killed in fierce clashes in Sri Lanka's embattled northern region, officials said in Colombo on Thursday.
Chitranganee Wagiswara, Sri Lanka's high commissioner to Canada, has claimed that the arrival of 492 Sri Lankan Tamils aboard the cargo ship MV Sun Sea is a 'human smuggling operation with links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.'
The Sri Lankan government on Sunday formally accepted the resignation of General Sarath Fonseka as the chief of defence staff and asked him to retire with immediate effect, rejecting his plea to serve till December 1.
Sri Lankan Chief of Defence Staff General Sarath Fonseka's resignation has been accepted by the president with immediate effect, rejecting his request to serve for two more weeks, officials said on Friday.
The LTTE said that the island's new president Mahindra Rajapakse had failed to grasp the fundamentals and basic concepts behind the decades-long war waged by the LTTE.\n\n
Advancing Sri Lankan troops have intensified the battle near the LTTE-controlled headquarters of Kilinochchi amidst fierce resistance by the Tamil Tigers and are now consolidating their position near Mannar, officials said today.
Bomman and Bellie, stars of the Oscar-winning documentary The Elephant Whisperers, were the special guests at the Hero Asian Champions Trophy 2023 event on Thursday.
The rebel military commander has long been linked to the summary execution and torture of civilians and the use of children as soldiers. Till the time he left the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in March 2004, Karuna was the Tigers' top commander in eastern Sri Lanka, and the reputed number two in the LTTE hierarchy.
Fierce clashes between Sri Lankan security forces and the LTTE militants in the rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi has left many Tamil tiger rebels dead as the army made further inroads into the island nation's embattled north, officials said on Saturday.
S M Krishna on Wednesday used his visit to Kilinochchi, a former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam bastion, the first by any Indian leader in recent years, to assure the war-weary Tamils of northern Sri Lanka of India's unflinching support and help as they pick up their lives following decades of bloodshed.
Sri Lanka on Thursday refuted allegations that India was compelling the government to end the military offensive against the Tamil Tigers, saying New Delhi only sought a peaceful solution to the decades-long problem.
Waging a desperate battle for survival, the Tamil Tigers launched a wave of suicide attacks on land and sea, but failed to stall the advance of Sri Lankan forces, who broke through their defences as fierce fighting left 44 rebels dead and many soldiers wounded.Two divisions of Lankan forces advancing on the trapped Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fighters captured a vital causeway which could help them in organising another break out attempt for an estimated 50,000 people.
There's some good news for wildlife lovers. The number of tigers in India has seen a sharp rise to 2,226 tigers from just over 1,400 seven years ago, the environment ministry announced on Tuesday.
At least ten people were killed and 20 others, including a cabinet minister, injured in a suicide attack by a suspected Liberation Tiger of Tamil Eelam bomber near a mosque in the southern Sri Lankan city of Matara on Tuesday. The suicide bomber struck during a ceremony to mark Eid-e-Milad-ud-Nabi, the birth anniversary of Prophet Mohammad, near the mosque in Akuresha area in Matara, police said.
Seven persons accused of being involved in smuggling activities for Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels and the Maoist movement have been detained under the National Security Act (NSA). While three of them were involved in smuggling activities for the LTTE, the others were part of the Maoist movement, a release said.
The offer comes amidst fears that the island was slowly and steadily drifting towards full-scale hostilities.
In a major breakthrough in their ongoing offensive against Tamil Tigers, Sri Lankan forces today seized the key town of Paranthan on the edge of Kilinochchi after intense battles which left 50 rebels dead, the defence ministry said.
India also hinted its backing to the Sri Lankan Army's action against Tamil Tigers, saying any country is free to take action against terrorists within its legal system.
A heavy gunbattle between Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tiger rebels left 28 militants and two security personnel dead in the island nation's embattled north, the defence ministry said on Monday.
Describing the slain head of LTTE political wing S P Thamilselvan as an extra-ordinary son of our nation, Tamil Tigers' reclusive supreme V Prabhakaran on Tuesday charged that the international community contributed to his killing by only paying "lip service to peace".
'It will be a double tragedy for Sri Lanka if making peace proves more difficult than making war,' says Brahma Chellaney.
The NIA had filed the case suo motu on July 8 last year and arrested the 13 persons from Tamil Nadu.
"It is important that they feel that they're going to be able to live a future of hope and of opportunity, that the internally displaced people that are now in camps -- there are still approximately 100,000 of them -- that they be allowed to go back to their homes," US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake said.
The fierce clashes got under way at a time when President Mahinda Rajapaksa unveiled the budget proposals for 2008 in Parliament and vowed to wipe out terrorism completely in the island nation.
The newspaper said the defence cooperation between Sri Lanka and Pakistan had grown significantly in recent years as Islamabad, unlike New Delhi, had no problems supplying the state-of-the-art weaponry to Lankan army to accelerate its counter-insurgency operations against the LTTE which finally ended with the killing of Tamil chief Vellupillai Prabhakaran.
Though the situation in Tamil Nadu is normal now, there is underlying tension about the possible reactions that will be evoked once Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam chief Velupillai Prabhakaran's death is confirmed."Though the common man will not turn to violence, there are still fringe elements that are pro-LTTE, which will try to whip up the sentiments of the people. But this can be brought under control if the state is alert," security analyst B Raman said.
'It's like looking at your own child. Quite large numbers of the dead are under 16. They grab them from their parents and they try to pull them back they get shot. These children have the dog tags and cyanide capsules. The younger children (captured) go for rehabilitation programme,' Brig Priyantha, who commands an artillery division in the north, told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
Karuna Amman, a rebel Tamil Tigers leader, jailed in London for entering Britain on a forged visa and diplomatic passport, will not face further charges and be deported to Sri Lanka soon, the Crown Prosecution Service has said. The 45-year-old Karuna whose real name is Vinayagmoorthy Muralitharan, has been accused by human rights groups of forcing teenagers to serve as child soldiers, torturing prisoners and killing hundreds of civilians.
He clarified that the government is not going to help the LTTE "as it is a terrorist organisation responsible for assassination of an Indian Prime Minister and not even apologised for it."
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