Germany convicts man to 82 months in prison over Kadirgamar assassination

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A man accused of helping in the 2005 murder of former Foreign Minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, on Monday, was sentenced to six years and 10 months in prison by Germany.

The court in Stuttgart, Germany said that he provided a sniper with crucial information to carry out the killing.

The man, allegedly a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), rebel group for more than 15 years, was charged as an accessory to murder.

He had been living in Germany since 2012 and was arrested in January 2019.

Kadirgamar was shot to death by a sniper as he was getting out of a swimming pool in his private apartment in Colombo.

The suspect charged in Germany allegedly spied on the politician and LTTE critic for more than a year, in an empty house in a neighboring apartment from which the deadly shot was fired.

LTTE was engaged in a civil war with the Sri Lankan military for years, trying to carve out a homeland in the South Asian island’s North, before its forces were decimated by the army in 2009.

The group is considered a terrorist organization by the prosecutor’s office in Germany.