• Under 1,000 weapons handed over by TELO, PLOTE, EPDP, EPRLF, EROS et al.

Deputy Defence Minister, Major General (Retired) Aruna Jayasekara said that less than 1,000 weapons belonging to former paramilitary groups that operated in the Northern and Eastern Provinces during the armed conflict have been handed over to the Government, with the Security Forces, the Police and Intelligence agencies continuing to monitor whether the groups pose any threat to national security.

He made the statement in response to a question raised by Opposition Parliamentarian, attorney Dayasiri Jayasekara in Parliament yesterday (6). Dayasiri Jayasekara said: "According to information held by the Army and records maintained by the Defence Ministry, seven paramilitary groups have been identified. They are the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), including the group associated with Suresh Premachandran, and the Eelam Revolutionary Students Organisation (EROS). The records indicate that the groups had used Type-56 weapons, automatic light rifles, automatic light pistols, light machine guns, medium-range multipurpose machine guns, automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortars and grenade launchers. It is difficult to provide separate exact figures for the number of weapons used by each group." Of the weapons held by them, Aruna Jayasekara said, the EPRLF had handed over two weapons, the EPDP 161, the PLOTE 23 and the Karuna Amman faction 615, bringing the total handed over by the groups to 801. Of the EPDP weapons, 30 had been handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department for an investigation involving former Minister Douglas Devananda, he said. Separately, he said that the Navy had recovered 28 weapons from various locations in operational areas through searches and Intelligence-led operations and subsequently handed them over to the Naval Ordnance Department. Of those weapons, 19 remain in usable condition, while nine are classified as unusable. Jayasekara also said that the former paramilitary groups, their leaders and most of their members had now returned to normal civilian activities, with some having entered active politics. However, he said that security agencies had put arrangements in place for continuous monitoring and surveillance to determine whether any of the groups posed a threat to national security. "The Security Forces Headquarters, the Infantry Headquarters established under them, all Army units, the Navy and the Air Force, the Police and Intelligence agencies are carrying out the necessary monitoring and surveillance."