TAMIL TIGERS ONCE AGAIN USES BRIBERY TO ATTACK THE SRI LANKA ARMY BUT FAILS THIS TIME

By Walter Jayawardhana

Two home guards, armed security personnel, who mostly help the police to protect civilian villagers from terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka, confessed that they were bribed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to detonate claymore bombs and kill the security forces.

The home guards, who belong to the Muslim community of the Eastern Province confessed to the Police that they were bribed after being caught with two claymore mines, a device the Tamil Tigers extensively use to kill security forces in the island’s Northern and the Eastern Provinces.

The two guards, named Buhari Nasir and Sulaiman Lebbe, who also belong to a minority community but who are at the receiving end of the Tamil Tigers driven out from certain areas in the North and the East, under an ethnic cleansing program by the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) against Muslims nevertheless said they were induced by the equivalent of of US $ 30 paid to each of them.

Soon, two Sri Lanka Army majors, and a captain are to face military tribunals for selling information to the LTTE. They apparently received more money than Buhari and Sulaiman, maintaining huge bank balances and spending lavishly at night clubs in Colombo. And they belong to the majority Sinhalese ethnic group of the country.

Bribes are alleged to be the lastest weapon in the hands of the LTTE. Other recent reports said the Tamil Tigers were also spending large amounts of money to buy influence in the Southern state of Tamil Nadu, in India where they are a banned terrorist group.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam agents were caught red-handed when they were allegedly trying to bribe US officials who were purportedly showing that they could lift the ban on them by the State Department in a sting operation last year.

The home guards were caught in the besieged Eastern Province of Sri Lanka, at Welikanda, where the security forces have died in large numbers in the past. The guards were serving the Katuwanwila Police post at Welikanda, where the security forces come into contact very often.

In addition to the two claymore mines the police also discovered, an AK-47 assault rife, five detonators for the mines and twenty rounds of ammunition for the rifle allegedly given to them by the Tamil Tigers.

Only a day before the discovery, Commander of the Army Lt. General Sarath Fonseka and Chief of Defense Staff Air Marshall Donald Perera visited Welikanda area on an inspection tour but no reports indicate that he was in any kind of danger. Fonseka had been earlier attacked by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber allegedly on information sold to the Tigers by a suspected army officer who is to appear before a military tribunal very soon.