Plot to Murder President of Sri Lanka Foiled

Authorities today foiled a plot to assassinate Sri Lankan President Junius Jayewardene by blowing up his office.

Two people arrested in the assassination attempt claimed to be members of the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students, a Tamil separatist group, said State Minister Anandatissa de Alwis. Police were searching for a third member of the team.

The attempt came just one day after Jayewardene’s government, in moves to end violence by the nation’s Tamil minority, lifted an eight-month curfew in northern Sri Lanka and promised to release more than 600 suspected guerrillas.

A State Ministry statement said today that the three men had planned to park a car loaded with 120 pounds of gelignite outside the former Parliament building in Colombo which houses Jayewardene’s office, then blow it up when the president was working.

The three men were reportedly preparing the bomb inside the parked car in another part of Colombo when a police officer approached and they fled. Two were apprehended shortly afterward.

Manufactured in India

The explosive material was of Indian manufacture, De Alwis said.

A day earlier, the National Security Ministry announced that it will immediately release 643 people detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act “because there is no evidence to indict them.”

Also Wednesday, the state-run Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corp. announced the end to the curfew in four northern districts of the Indian Ocean island nation, formerly known as Ceylon.

The predominantly Hindu Tamils, who are a majority in northern Sri Lanka, say they are discriminated against by the largely Buddhist Sinhalese majority.

Hundreds have died, most of them Tamils, in terrorist attacks, mob violence, and retaliatory strikes by the Sri Lankan army since the Tamil separatist movement intensified in the late 1970s.