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Kadirgamar killing: Germany declines to divulge identity of suspect
View(s):Citing privacy laws, German authorities have refused to divulge to the Sri Lankan Government the full identity of a suspected LTTE member who was this week charged by a German prosecutor as an accessory to murder in the 2005 assassination of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar.
The suspect was identified only as Navanithan G and he is also charged with being a member of a foreign terrorist organisation. He is not among the six suspects indicted in the High Court by the Attorney General’s Department in Sri Lanka. They are LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, Pottu Amman, Charles Master, Manimekalai, Muththiah Sahadevan and Isidor Aarokyanathan.
Sahadevan died in detention in June this year while Aarokyanathan was acquitted in November last year. None of the others is alive.
Sri Lanka’s intelligence apparatus only has one Navanithan in their records but cannot confirm if it is the same man who is being prosecuted in Germany as the German authorities will not release his full name. The 40-year-old suspect was arrested in January based on information given by a counsellor saying he had aided in the murder.
German Federal prosecutors filed the indictment in a Stuttgart court earlier this month. They said he belonged to the LTTE intelligence unit from 2002 to 2009 and provided information that was used to carry out the killing of Mr Kadirgamar.
Meanwhile, in Germany, Sri Lankan diplomats said the suspect had entered that country in 2012. The suspect is also said to have helped leading LTTE figures flee Sri Lanka in the final phase of the war, according to foreign news agencies reports.