LTTE criticises SLA over search in political office

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 January 2003, 17:45 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers (LTTE) in Batticaloa Saturday protested against a search operation by the Sri Lanka army (SLA) in the premises of their political office in Kallady, an outer suburb of the eastern town. A stand-off developed when LTTE officials refused to allow heavily armed SLA troops that had surrounded the political office around 8 p.m. Friday night to enter and search the premises, VoT nightly broadcast said today.

The SLA troops were backed by armoured vehicles. The LTTE officials allowed a Police officer and an SLA officer to enter and search the premises in the company of the local Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) around 10.30 p.m.

“Nothing incriminatory was found during the search”, the Police said.

A Sri Lanka army source in Batticaloa said that a senior military intelligence operative identified as ‘Cashier’ had gone missing on Friday. “We were looking for him," the SLA source said. ‘Cashier’ was formerly a Tamil militant.

Meanwhile, LTTE officials in Batticaloa slammed the SLA for “creating such incidents to disrupt the peace process."