Police unravel air base attack plot

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO, NOV. 19. A call made from a cellular phone by one of the key suspects in the LTTE attack on the Katunayake air base has helped police detectives unravel the plot.

The attack on the air base and the adjoining international airport on July 24 left several military and civilian aircraft destroyed or severely damaged. It sent Sri Lanka's ailing economy into a tailspin from which it has not recovered yet.

Fourteen LTTE cadres were killed or blew themselves up during the virtual battle that raged at the airport that day, but investigators knew that some of the attackers had slipped away.

The Sunday Times newspaper has reported that the police were led to one of the main participants in the attack by his girlfriend who was tracked down from a call he had made to her from his cell phone.

Police believe the suspect, Pushpakumara, was the main co- ordinator of the attack which was meticulously planned over two years, and involved at least 17 LTTE cadres.

Pushpakumara was arrested from a house in Negombo, a fishing town close to the airport, 45 km. north of the capital.

A set of phone numbers pasted on the back of a communications set used by the attackers, recovered from the air-base in the aftermath of the attack, were discovered to be those of six cell phones that the LTTE strike team had used to keep in touch with one another. They were also in touch through the cell phones with a command centre in the LTTE-controlled northern Sri Lankan mainland, during the time that the attack was being planned, police have discovered.

One of the more shocking revelations of the investigation so far is that Pushpakumara and two others from his team managed to enter the airbase complex as many as seven times in the last few days before the attack.

They entered and left from an unauthorised opening in the airbase perimeter fence that was being used by airmen to slip in and out of the base without permission. It was the same gap in the fence that was used by the team on the day of the attack. Some members of the team, and the weapons used in the attack had arrived by sea two days earlier from LTTE-controlled north-western Sri Lanka.

The police believe that the family with whom Pusphakumara had been living had been especially sent to Negombo from northern Sri Lanka by the LTTE to provide him cover. He had been registered in police records of the area as their son. The newspaper reported that the family moved out of the house immediately after the attack and are now in Tiruchi in Tamil Nadu.

Pushpakumara's arrest led the police to another key suspect, Victor Dominic, who dropped off the attackers at the air base in his bus, and 100 others who are said to have assisted in the attack in one way or another.

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Section  : International
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