-By Sanjaya Dassanayake
(Lanka-e-News -12.Feb.2025, 8.55 PM) Lakshman Kadirgamar, who served as Sri Lanka's Minister of Foreign Affairs during President Chandrika Bandaranaike's administration, was assassinated on the night of August 12, 2005. He was shot by an unidentified gunman as he stepped out of his residence near the swimming pool.
The Sri Lanka Criminal Investigation Department (CID) launched an investigation under the premise that Tamil Eelam Liberation Tigers (LTTE) snipers were responsible for Kadirgamar's assassination. Initial reports stated that four bullets were found in his body—two in the head, one in the neck, and one in the chest.
Kadirgamar's residence, which included a swimming pool, was located at 36 Bullers Lane, Colombo 7. The investigation team suggested the possibility of two shooters, given the four bullet wounds. The shots were reportedly fired from a window on the upper floor of a two-story house at No. 42, his closest neighbor's home.
There are numerous unexplained secrets surrounding the former foreign minister's murder. The house at No. 42, from which the shooters allegedly operated, was only 30 meters from Kadirgamar's residence. Yet, no houses in the vicinity were searched for two and a half hours after his death. The shooting occurred between 10:00 and 10:30 PM on August 12. The first senior police officer to arrive at the crime scene, Special Task Force Officer Ajith Wickramasekara, only informed the owner of the No. 42 house, Lakshman Thalayasingham, and searched his house at around 1:00 AM the next day—two and a half hours after the shooting. However, investigators failed to apprehend any suspects, and the delay in searching the house raised significant suspicions.
Following the assassination, police reported discovering items in the upper floor of No. 42, including a plastic bag used for human waste and urine disposal, several empty bullet casings, and a sniper rifle mount, along with food remnants.
It was suggested that an LTTE sniper shot Kadirgamar from the upper floor of No. 42, aiming at his head or chest, making the assassination relatively easy (one shot – one kill). Highly trained snipers can accurately shoot targets from distances between 500 and 700 meters. Therefore, a sniper wouldn't typically need three additional bullets to hit a target from just 30 meters away.
Sniper rifles used by military forces worldwide are high-powered, heavy weapons. Such rifles can destroy even a human head from about 500 meters away. Thus, a body hit by four sniper bullets from a distance of 30 meters would likely be severely damaged.
At the time of Kadirgamar's assassination, sniper rifles did not have automatic firing capabilities; they could only fire one shot at a time. After firing, it would take a few seconds to load the next round before shooting again.
According to initial reports, Kadirgamar was shot twice in the head by a sniper. Experts analyzing his death expressed surprise that someone who had been shot twice in the head could still be targeted with two more shots in the neck and chest.
Kadirgamar's funeral was conducted with state honors. Those who paid their respects found it hard to believe his body had sustained typical sniper injuries. If he had been truly shot by a sniper, his head would have been severely damaged. However, people who saw his remains testified that his body and head appeared relatively normal.
At the time, President Chandrika Kumaratunga topped the LTTE's assassination list, with Kadirgamar in second place. State intelligence services had informed them of this, and as a result, they were provided with heightened security. Despite this, Kadirgamar often used his private residence instead of his official one. However, there were significant lapses in the security of his private residence.
Kadirgamar's security was provided by the Sri Lanka Army Commando Regiment's Special VIP Unit and the Sri Lanka Police's Ministerial Security Division (MSD). In such scenarios, it is the duty of the commanding officer and the guards to prevent all possible threats to their VIP's life. Their primary responsibility includes covering areas from where sniper attacks could occur, especially locations frequently visited by the VIP. Commandos are specially trained to identify potential sniper vantage points. However, in this case, they failed to meet these basic requirements until the attack happened. This raises troubling questions—was Kadirgamar deliberately left vulnerable to a sniper attack? Was sufficient security withheld from his frequently visited residence for a reason? Or was the sniper narrative staged after the murder? These questions remain unanswered.
The Colombo Crime Division, Military Intelligence, and Foreign Intelligence agencies investigated Kadirgamar's assassination. Reports from the Sunday Times indicated that the shooters who fired from the upper floor of No. 42 had attempted to carry out the attack a month earlier but aborted the mission at the last minute.
The reason for this was one of Kadirgamar's security officers watching the upper floor of the house. However, neither the Commando unit nor the MSD appeared to take the risk of an attack from an upper floor seriously. Kadirgamar's security detail also failed to cover areas from where such an attack could occur, which was a significant oversight.
Moreover, no scientific forensic investigations were conducted regarding the empty sniper casings found at the crime scene.
1. Did the bullets found in Kadirgamar's body match the casings recovered from the shooters' location?
2. What type of weapon was used to fire those bullets?
3. Could such a weapon fire four shots consecutively?
4. What level of damage could a sniper shot from a distance of 30-35 meters inflict on a body?
5. Did Kadirgamar's body exhibit such damage?
These questions should have been confirmed through specialized forensic investigations.
Aside from attributing the murder to LTTE snipers, no significant investigations were conducted. The primary objective of the investigative teams appeared to be steering the case toward blaming the LTTE.
After the suspicious death of a high-ranking politician, investigators should have seized all weapons from the security officers present at the time of the incident and sent them for forensic analysis. However, no such measures were taken. The weapons were never confiscated or sent to the government analyst. Who needed to hide the identity of the real killer?
Investigators revealed to the media that Uyanpalla Muththayya Sahadevan, an employee of Lakshman Thalayasingham, the owner of No. 42, was the main suspect. A man named Vinodan, an LTTE member, allegedly provided Sahadevan with a large sum of money and a mobile phone to assist the snipers. However, detailed phone records of the mobile phone given by Vinodan to Sahadevan revealed no names of the shooters…
Anyone with a brain can get a clear picture of what happened when they look at the drama put on to credit the death to the LTTE account. When Mr. Kadirgamar came out from swimming, a bystander shot him twice with a small gun aimed at his head. After the first two shots to the head, he fell to the ground and the killer approached him and fired two more bullets into his neck and chest to ensure death.
The killer could be a commando soldier or an MSD officer in the minister's security wing because these officers are very good at close-range combat and shooting at close targets with 9 mm pistols. After the killing, as per their long plan, the criminals performed the LTTE sniper drama.
That is why none of his bodyguards were arrested for murder or on suspicion of murder in subsequent investigations. Their weapons were not seized to be presented to the government analyst. It seems that the investigators did this on purpose. A Political Conflict Between Mahinda and Kadirgamar
A few months before the minister's death, President Chandrika Kumaratunga wanted to nominate Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar as her party's prime ministerial candidate for the next general election. At that time, Kadirgamar was a more popular figure among Sri Lankans than Fisheries Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. The public believed that Kadirgamar had sincerely worked to cut off the LTTE’s foreign supplies and involve them in the peace process with the Sri Lankan government.
However, Mahinda Rajapaksa was completely opposed to this and exerted pressure on President Chandrika through his SLFP supporters to avoid nominating Kadirgamar and to nominate him instead as the SLFP’s prime ministerial candidate.
Before the April 2004 general election, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Kadirgamar met at Minister Mangala Samaraweera’s residence, where Kadirgamar promised Rajapaksa that he would never run against him. However, Mahinda, being a seasoned politician, did not trust Kadirgamar’s words.
Since being elected to the Sri Lankan Parliament in 1970, Rajapaksa’s political history had been marked by controversy from the very beginning. Mahinda believed in removing all political and civil figures opposing him, either by force or by persuasion. His favored tactic was bribery. If that didn’t work, he would resort to other methods to silence his opponents.
It is no secret that before the 2005 presidential election, Basil Rajapaksa, through Tiran Alles, provided the LTTE with a sum of 184 million rupees or more, preventing Tamil people in the North and East from voting. Even Ranil Wickremesinghe, his main opponent, accused him of winning the presidency through this bribe. Was there an agreement between Mahinda and the LTTE to eliminate Kadirgamar before the presidential election, and did Mahinda facilitate it?
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by (2025-02-12 17:52:38)
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