Sri Lanka says activist leaving for Australia

AFP | Yahoo! News
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

A radical Sri Lankan activist reported by his party to have been abducted has been found safe and is to return to his home in Australia on Tuesday, a police spokesman in Colombo told AFP.

Joint Sri Lankan-Australian citizen Premakumar Gunaratnam, 46, went missing on Friday from Kiribathgoda, north of Colombo, where he was preparing to launch a new political party, according to his family and fellow activists.

"He has told us that he wants to return to Australia," spokesman Ajith Rohana said. "We have given him a security escort to go to the airport."

Rohana said Gunaratnam had already checked in for his flight to Australia. He added that the activist had used a different name while in Sri Lanka.

Officials in Colombo had earlier insisted that no Australian national named Premakumar Gunaratnam had recently entered the country.

There was no immediate comment from his party or his family in Australia.

Gunaratnam is the leader of a breakaway faction of the JVP, or People's Liberation Front. The JVP led two failed bids to violently overthrow governments in 1971 and 1987 in campaigns that left up to 100,000 people dead.

Australia pressed Sri Lanka for urgent clarification on his whereabouts and a foreign office spokeswoman said Tuesday that he had been accounted for.

Gunaratnam's family said that he had been abducted by an armed group, with his Frontline Socialist Party splinter group blaming the "state and government".

Colombo denied any involvement in Gunaratnam's disappearance.

Rights groups have reported dozens of abductions since the end of the island's civil war in 2009, but at least some of the incidents appear to have been private disputes or underworld activities.

© AFP