Thai police deck LTTE’s KP

LTTE arms procurement chief, head of shipping arrested in Thailand

DEFENCE LINE By Ruwan Weerakoon
Kumar Padmanadan, alias “KP”, head of procurement and architect of LTTE’s shipping network, was arrested by the Thai police in the interior of Bangkok.

On the night of September 9, Kumar Padmanadan who was with his wife, a Thai divorcee, and children, were about to retire for the night, when they heard a knock on their door. Intelligence and police officials raided his apartment and arrested him, while recovering 17 passports of various countries, including USA, UK, Canada, India, Singapore, Malaysia etc, under different names.

They also detected LTTE bank account details in his possession. He was the main man who supplied weapons and arms to the LTTE and was in charge of the entire shipping network, drug smuggling as well as fund raising for the LTTE.

Thai intelligence had conducted close surveillance of KP, prior to his arrest.

KP, in his early 60s, was suffering from Diabetes and poor health at the time of his arrest. Because of his poor health, he trained a group called the Aiyanna group, to undertake procurement activities, as he was unable to travel. But, he couldn’t train or pass on all his contacts to the Aiyanna group.

In 1985, LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran got to know him through Casie Chetty, an LTTE sympathiser. Thereafter, they became very good friends and undertook the responsibility to raise funds and procure arms for the LTTE. He is the only leader who didn’t undergo military training.
He is widely known as “Catch me if you can” but got caught.

All arms purchases for the LTTE was with the knowledge of KP, and recently, there were four Tamils arrested in the US, with an Indonesian General, who were trying to acquire powerful missiles targeting Kfirs and MiGs.

The military official was jailed, while the four Tamils, under intense interrogation by the FBI and the CIA revealed that their chief was Kumar Padmanadan and that they had tried to purchase missiles on his advice.
KP purchased weapons from corrupt Cambodian Generals, as well as from Eritrea, Sudan, Angola, Colombia and Arab militants. (At the inception, the LTTE was trained by the Fatah organization in Palestine). KP was the go-between the LTTE and Fatah.

On overseas visits to purchase arms or for his shipping business, he had passports for the respective country. As to how he got those passports, is a million dollar question.

Janes Interational Intelligence magazine disclosed that the LTTE’s annual income is US$ 300 million, and confirms that the man behind generating this income was none other than Kumar Padmanadan.

During the peace talks in Thailand LTTE’s eastern leader Vignayamoorthy Muralidharan, alias ‘Karuna’, was a participant. Prabhakaran instructed Karuna to meet KP and hand over a weapons catalogue with the required weapons.

The LTTE required M16, 70-, 50-, 55- mm caliber guns as well as artillery and mortar shells and mini rocket launchers.

Kumar Padmanadan is the head of the LTTE shipping network. Most of the ships’ captains were foreigners, to avoid suspicion. These ships carry cargo from country to country. Western intelligence revealed that most of these ships used for drug smuggling, sailed to Colombia, USA, Thailand, African and other countries around the world.

The arrest of KP is a significant blow to the LTTE, eminent terrorism researcher Rohan Gunaratne said.

According to his analysis, if the procurement fails for any terrorist organization, then it is very difficult for the organization to survive.
Prior to this setback, the LTTE suffered three other major setbacks. (1) Split within the LTTE (2) Death of main propagandist and mouthpiece Anton Balasingham (3) Serious injury to Soosai.

It is reliably learnt from Kilinochchi that Prabhakaran and his team were very concerned over KP’s arrest and consulted lawyers from Australia to intervene and appear on his behalf in court. And KP is a Thai citizen as well.