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Colombo, March 11 (IANS) Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and five others were Tuesday charged in the assassination of Sri Lankan foreign minister Laksman Kadirgamar in 2005. Colombo High Court officials said in the charge-sheet filed by the Sri Lankan attorney general, the head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), V. Prabhakaran, its intelligence chief Pottu Amman, intelligence operative Charles Master, Komathi Manimekalai, Muttiah Sahadevan and Arokiarajah Arokianathan, were accused of conspiring, aiding and abetting the assassination of Kadirgamar.

Kadirgamar was shot dead as he was emerging from the swimming pool at his private residence on Buller’s Road, Colombo, on the night of Aug 12, 2005.

The killer was a sharp shooter perched on the attic of an adjacent building. He had disguised himself as a worker engaged in some construction in the house.

Prabhakaran had earlier been sentenced to a long term imprisonment for planning the bombing of the Central Bank in Colombo in 1996, which claimed hundreds of lives.

He is one of the accused in the India’s former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991. Pottu Amman had also been charged in the Rajiv Gandhi case.

But the duo were not brought to trial because of the inability of the Indian and Sri Lankan governments to arrest them.