Sri Lanka. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and the 'Piththala Handiya' explosive attack (D B S Jeyaraj, South Asia Monitor)

Former Sri Lankan Army Commander Sarath Fonseka came out with a bombshell statement some days ago in Parliament. The ex-army chief now a Cabinet minister in the Sirisena – Wickremesinghe Government accused his erstwhile comrade -at - arms and former Secretary of Defence Gotabhaya Rajapaksa of having “stage managed” an assassination attempt on himself nearly ten years ago in order to win sympathy for his family; the Rajapaksas. Fonseka who was serving as army commander at that time was referring to the incident on December 1st 2006 when a suicide bomber belonging to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) tried to ram an explosive laden three-wheeler into the vehicle in which the defence secretary was travelling in. A news report about Fonseka’s allegation appearing in the English newspaper”Daily News” stated as follows: “Sri Lanka’s former army chief told Parliament Tuesday that a bomb blast apparently targeting former president Mahinda Rajapakse’s brother 10 years ago was an “inside job” to win sympathy for the then-ruling family.Sarath Fonseka, now a government legislator, said the December 2006 bomb attack blamed on the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels had been stage-managed by the president’s brother Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, then the defence secretary.“No terrorist will set off a suicide bomb 25 metres away from the intended target,” Fonseka told Parliament during a debate on scaling down military security granted to the former strongman.” “The government has said it is removing troops in Rajapakse’s bodyguard contingent and replacing them with police commandos as part of a policy of relieving the military from civilian security duties.” “Gotabhaya escaped the 2006 bombing in Colombo unhurt but it killed two members of his military convoy.Soon after the attack, the government asked peace broker Norway to halt all contacts with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

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