These have to be repeated over and over again, as every attempt is being made to cover up the crime.
The CID first made submissions to the court on 01 June 2009. According to the submission report B 732/2009 made by Inspector A. Nishantha Silva, Rajiv Naganathan, Pradeep Viswanathan, Kasturiarachchilage John Reit, Jamaldeen Dilan, Mohammad Sajit, Tilakeswaran Ramalingam, Anthony Kasturiarachchi, Amalan Leon, Roshan Leon, Kanagaraja Jegan and Mohammed Ali Anwar (who had been involved in previous abductions) had disappeared.
The case starts on a complaint by the then Navy chief Wasantha Karannagoda that his chief bodyguard Lt. Commander Sampath Munasinghe has had connected with LTTE suspects. A search of Munasinghe’s locker found the NICs and passports of the missing youths. That started the revelation of the unofficial groups within the armed forces.
Karannagoda had a personal enmity with Munasinghe, who led investigators to the missing youths.
Statements given by seven Navy officers at the magistrate’s chamber indicated a group led by Munasinghe had abducted the 11 youths, with the aid of an intelligence team led by Lt. Commander Hettiarachchi Mudiyanselage Prasad Chandana and supervised by D.K.P. Dassanayake. The youths had been detained from August 2008 to March 2009 at Pittu Bambuwa at Chaitya Road, Colombo, and thereafter at Gunsite underground camp in Trincomalee, with Navy intelligence supervision.
One of them, Naganathan, managed to use a mobile phone and give his mothers the details of the officers detaining the group. She gave the details to the CID. Naganathan had been abducted along with his car, which had been used at the Trincomalee camp for some time, and later Dassanayake gave it to his wife as a birthday present. His mother even went to India for a religious activity as she believed he would be freed, as claimed by him. Extortion was being demanded to release the youths. The CID recorded evidence from the ex-Navy commander and others.
Ex-minister Felix Perera was a close friend of the Naganathan family and they told him everything with the hope of getting their son freed. Perera once spoke to Karannagoda, who asked him to give the details in writing, saying that the youths would be freed if they were living. However, he did nothing and his intervention ended there.
Navy officers themselves informed the present and former presidents about the criminal activities of the Dassanayake. It seemed their pastime was to abduct persons for ransom. Dassanayake, during a visit to the country while undergoing training in the US, gave a statement to the courts. He was prevented from leaving the country, arrested and remanded. That saw Dassanayake suddenly falling ill, with him claiming that playing cricket did it to him. The CID failed to find out if he played cricket. Another suspect, officer Hettiarachchi, is still evading courts.
The war hero label is being used by persons like Gammanpila to cover up the sins of Dassanayake. The question is how Dassanayake did ‘an intelligence operation’ without the knowledge of the then Navy chief Karannagoda. Isn’t he the Dassanayake, as exposed by the CID, who is responsible for the disappearance of the 11 youths? What had Karannagoda been doing while an unofficial group operated within the Navy?
The 11 youths were first accused of being pro-LTTE. That allegation had to be dropped after the exposure that they had been abducted for ransom. We also revealed how Dassanayake made Sinhalese to disappear too. Karannagoda cannot wash his hands off the matter. Once the power is lost, the nudity is exposed.
The abductions, disappearances, white van gangs during the previous regime are not fabrications. They actually happened. A military cannot have an unofficial group under it without anyone getting to know it. Wolves in sheep skins will thrive under the label of patriotism. Therefore, Karannagoda too, should be investigated in order to expose the wolves too.
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