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Minister clears Athurugiriya safe house
By Anthony David
All further investigations into the Kandy Police raid on the Military Intelligence Safe House at Athurugiriya have been dropped since the authorities are now convinced it was used for legitimate purposes, Interior Minister John Amaratunga declared yesterday.

He told The Sunday Times in an exclusive interview "there has been no political agenda" in the operation of this safe house "as claimed earlier." He said, "we are fully satisfied with the explanation offered by the Army. More than that, Defence Minister Tilak Marapana himself had come forward and taken responsibility. What more about it?"

Mr Amaratunga was commenting on the January 2 raid by Kulasiri Udugampola, then SP, Special Operations, Kandy Division, on a safe house run by the Army's Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) at the Millennium City in Athurugiriya.
By his own admission, Mr. Udugampola carried out the raid without the knowledge of either the Inspector General of Police or the DIG in charge of Kandy Division. He seized an array of weapons from the Safe House, arrested an officer and five soldiers attached to the Directorate of Military Intelligence.

As exclusively revealed by The Sunday Times, it later turned out that the men and material belonged to the Army's highly successful Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols (LRRP) - a long standing secret which became public together with the identities of the men involved.

However, interested groups, including retired senior Army officers, reportedly linked to disgruntled sections in the DMI, alleged that the safe house was used to store weapons that were to be used to assassinate UNF leaders. They also carried out a high pitched propaganda campaign to say the DMI did not carry out LRRP operations and that all its activities were suspect.

"Since we are now convinced about the explanation given, there is no need at all to continue further investigations," Mr. Amaratunga said. In an interview with The Sunday Times (Situation Report - January 27), Defence Minister Tilak Marapana said, "Even if the initial raid was justified because they were misinformed about the state of affairs, the Army Commander (Lt. Gen. Lionel Balagalle) and the Director of Military Intelligence (Brig. Kapila Hendavithana), informed the Police that this was an Army location. They told the Police that the persons who had been arrested are Army personnel and that the items that were recovered were Army property.

"The officer and men have been authorized by the Army to carry out operations using these items. No less a person than the Army Commander informs of that to the Police and from that point onwards I think the Police are to be blamed," Mr Marapana pointed out.

Besides the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is learnt to have directed Mr. Marapana to conduct his own inquiries into political and other aspects

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