Terrorist who kidnapped the Americans is a Sri Lankan minister???

20 Years since Minister Devananda's Major Dance in Terrorism

by Sachi Sri Kantha

Twenty years and two months ago, - in May 1984 – there was a daring
kidnapping episode in Jaffna involving two Americans. It was the first
of its kind in Sri Lankan soil, and fortunately until now, has never
recurred. A newly-wed American couple, the Allens from Ohio, were
kidnapped from their residence. It created a week-long international
stir, and involved diplomatic rope-pulling of three countries – Sri
Lanka, India and USA. The four political leaders who were at helm then
and caught in the swirl of event – Indira Gandhi (India's prime
minister), M.G.Ramachandran (Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu),
J.R.Jayewardene (Sri Lanka's President) and Ronald Reagan (American
President) have departed from the scene. I haven't heard about the two
victims – the Allen couple - since then, and presume that they are
still alive. But, one of the perpetrators of the kidnapping terrorism
is still in political limelight. He was none other than Minister
Douglas Devananda.

Since he escaped from a suicide-bomb attack on July 7th in Colombo,
Devananda has received sympathetic coverage in the news media in
Colombo and Chennai as well as from the press release of American
embassy in Colombo. Quite humanistic indeed. But, one should not
forget that the same Devananda played the opposite role of a terrorist
in the life of two American citizens, Stanley and Mary Allen. With his
then EPRLF buddies – K.Padmanabha and Varadaraja Perumal -, Devananda
was in Madras, manipulating the deed through the cadres of his People
Liberation Army (PLA). He was the ‘commander' of this PLA. This sordid
and dumb kidnapping episode of two American citizens in Jaffna soil
hardly received any mention or analysis in the Broken Palmyra (1990)
book, authored by Rajan Hoole and his three colleagues – probably for
two reasons; (1) the authors were sympathetic to the Marxist rhetorics
pouted by the EPRLF group. (2) it was not committed by the LTTE.

For the record, first I provide the 1984 news reports from the New
York Times, USA Today, the Hindu and Economist. Then, I provide
excerpts from the then Tamil Nadu police chief K.Mohandas's 1992 book
on MGR [MGR: The Man and the Myth], which exposed Devananda as one of
the perpetrators of this kidnapping terrorism to the world.

(1) New York Times [May 12, 1984]

U.S. Couple Kidnapped by Guerrillas in Sri Lanka

"COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 11 (AP). Eight armed insurgents kidnapped an
American couple in northern Sri Lanka today and reportedly threatened
to kill them unless the Government here paid a ransom of $2 million
and freed 20 imprisoned rebels. ‘You have only 72 hours to comply with
our demands,' the kidnappers said in a ransom note, according to the
National Security Minister, Lalith Athulathmudali. ‘There will be no
negotiations.'

The Americans were identified as Stanley Bryson Allen, 36 years old,
and his wife, Mary, 29, of Ohio. The Defense Ministry said Mr.Allen
was an engineer for the Ruhlin Company of Ohio and was supervising a
water project in the northern city of Jaffna sponsored by the United
States Agency for International Development.

Mr.Athulathmudali told reporters the ransom note said it was from the
People's Liberation Army, an obscure splinter group of the Eelam
Tigers [sic]. This is an underground organization fighting for a
separate Tamil nation in northern Sri Lanka that would be called
Eelam. The Tamils, most of them Hindus living near Jaffna, 180 miles
north of this capital, constitute about 18 percent of Sri Lanka's 15
million people. The majority Sinhalese people are predominantly
Buddhist. The National Security Minister said the Sri Lankan
Government would respond to the ransom note with ‘a deafening
silence'. He said Sri Lanka would never succumb to terrorism.

Foreign Minister A.C.S.Hameed met with the United States Ambassador,
John H.Reed, and assured him that the Government would do everything
possible to protect the lives of the two Americans. The Government,
meanwhile, ordered all foreigners to leave the Jaffna region.
Mr.Athulathmudali said the evidence suggested that the American couple
had been taken to southern India to the state of Tamil Nadu. He said
they were kidnapped from their home, gagged and carried off in a
pickup truck, which was later found abandoned 25 miles to the west
along Sri Lanka's coast. The minister said the ransom note, which was
delivered to the provincial administrator in Jaffna, demanded that the
ransom be paid to the Indian state authorities in Tamil Nadu to be
given to the rebels. He said the note accused the Allens of working
for the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

More than 400 Tamils were killed and 150,000 made homeless during an
outbreak of ethnic violence in Sri Lanka last July. At least 50 people
have been killed in and around Jaffna since late March in more
violence.

Couple Married in March [Special to the New York Times]

The Allens were married on March 24 in suburban Cuyahoga Falls, and
they left for Sri Lanka three days later. Mr.Allen has worked for the
Akron-based Ruhlin Company, a construction firm, since 1967. He became
a project manager in 1982 and was heading a $4 million fresh-water
distribution system being built in Sri Lanka. A company official said
the project was started last October and was to be finished in April
1985. Mrs.Allen was a secretary for Ruhlin in Akron before the couple
married."

(2) USA Today [ May 15, 1984, p.3A]

Abducted U.S. pair reported released

"Hoping for ‘the best of news', the family of an American couple
kidnapped in Sri Lanka waited anxiously Monday after receiving news
that the pair had been released in a dense jungle. Hundreds of troops
and police on the island nation off the southeast coast of India were
searching remote jungle roads for Stanley B.Allen, 36, and his wife,
Mary Elizabeth, 30, who were kidnapped by Sri Lankan rebels last
Thursday.

The Allens were freed in an area inhabited by leopards, elephants and
other wild animals, Sri Lankan National Security Minister Lalith
Athulathmudali said. ‘I fear there may be a danger to their safety',
he said. The rebels had demanded a ransom of $20 million in gold and
had threatened to kill the couple on Monday – Sri Lanka's highest
religious holiday – if their demands weren't met. They had accused the
Allens of being CIA spies. But they were freed after appeals by Indian
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and other religious and political
leaders, officials said.

Vice President George Bush has been in India since Saturday on a
goodwill tour, but he played no role in the couple's release. Sri
Lankan officials say they did not meet the rebels' demands. ‘We await
with warm hearts for the best of news,' Pat Daymon, 27 – Mary's sister
– told reporters outside her parents' home.

Tamil separatists who abducted the Allens are a minority ethnic group
of Hindus pushing for independence from Sri Lanka's Buddhist majority.
Allen ‘had some concerns about his wife going with him to Sri Lanka,'
said the Rev.David S.Belasic, who performed the ceremony at the
couple's March 24 wedding. ‘They obviously had a great love for each
other and wanted to go ahead with a life together. They certainly
didn't plan on being held hostage.'

Mary – nicknamed ‘Sarge' by her brother Jim when he returned from a
tour of duty in Vietnam – met Stanley while both worked for the Ruhlin
Co. of Akron. Allen, who went to work for Ruhlin in 1967, was
overseeing a $4 million water-purification project in Sri Lanka. In
Washington, State Department officials said they were in ‘constant
touch' with the U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka, but resolving the
kidnapping ‘is the job of the host government.'

U.S. policy regarding kidnapping is well known, said Kevin O'Connell
of the Office for Combating Terrorism. ‘We will not pay ransom or
release prisoners. We make no deals with kidnappers. That way
everybody is a little bit safer.'

(3) The Hindu [May 18, 1984]

Aim of exposing CIA achieved – EPRLF

"Madras, May 17: The Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front
(EPRLF) has said that it pulled off the kidnap stunt on the American
couple, Stanley and Mary Allen, to expose the activities of the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Jaffna before the projected visit
of the Sri Lanka President, Mr.J.R.Jayewardene, to the United States
next month.

EPRLF sources in Madras told UNI that it had never been their
intention to harm the hostages. They only wanted to draw the world's
attention to the plight of Tamil political prisoners languishing in
Sri Lanka jails. ‘We achieved our objective in the world-wide
publicity we received from our kidnap drama', they said. The EPRLF
said they readily accepted the Prime Minister, Mrs.Indira Gandhi's
appeal for the release of the hostages ‘as we have full faith and
confidence that she will do something to help the harassed Tamils in
Sri Lanka.' The front appealed to Mrs.Gandhi to use her good offices
with Mr.Jayewardene to get the 20 political prisoners released.

The sources said they had announced that the kidnapped couple was
released at 8.45 pm on Monday at Kilinochi – 24 hours before the
actual release – to take the heat off the militants by security forces
in Jaffna. Giving their version of the kidnap, the EPRLF said they had
been watching the activities of the Allens for the past six months.
‘Although they claimed they were water resources experts, they did
little on this project, and along with two other Americans, were
taking photographs and making logistic studies of the Jaffna
peninsula.'

The EPRLF then decided to kidnap all the four Americans, but before
they could execute their plan, two Americans left Jaffna and they
learnt that the Allens planned to leave on May 15. On the night of May
10, seven armed militants entered the beach house of the Allens and
took them away at gunpoint. The two were blindfolded and taken in a
jeep to a residential area 20 km away and lodged in a house. The
militants took the jeep to Kangesanthurai port, a northern point of
Jaffna peninsula and abandoned it there, to create the impression that
the kidnappers and their captives had escaped to South India."

(3) Economist [May 19, 1984, p.39]

The innocents and the terrorists

"Stanley and Mary Allen from Akron, Ohio, a home-spun young couple,
just married, went to Tamil country in northern Sri Lanka to work on a
scheme to provide drinking water for the local people. On May 10th
eight guerrillas broke into their home and marched them off. Six days
later the innocents were freed unharmed and unransomed after
reproachful comments by other guerrilla groups, by Mrs.Indira Gandhi,
by officials of India's Tamil Nadu state, and by 20 Tamil prisoners
whose release had been demanded in a ransom note (along with pound 1.4
million in gold). Even terrorists can get embarrassed.

The kidnappers were from a group that calls itself the Eelamist
People's Revolutionary Front (Eelam is the name given by separatists
to their would-be Tamil state). Its secretary-general,
Mr.K.Pathmanathan [sic: the correct name is Padmanabha; who was a pal
of Dayan Jayatilleka whose father Mervyn de Silva, should have
contributed this newsreport, since he was the Sri Lankan correspondent
of the Economist] who is believed to have had training in Lebanon, was
picked up in Delhi with five colleagues and questioned. Mrs.Gandhi,
who has an election coming up, is anxious to woo her Tamil voters, but
not to the extent of allowing India to become embroiled in a terrorist
war; she has enough problems in Punjab. It was recently reported that
three new terrorist groups had been formed in the Indian sanctuary of
Tamil Nadu.

The Sri Lankan government's answer to separatism is not encouraging.
Its armed services are not trained to take on terrorists. Its
‘all-party' conference on the Tamil problem, launched in January by
President Junius Jayewardene, was boycotted from the start by the main
opposition Freedom Party and is now being snubbed by the Tamil United
Liberation Front. The TULF, which, despite its fierce name, is a
moderate organisation, is planning a non-violent civil disobedience
campaign in the Tamil areas as a protest against civilian deaths
caused by ‘army activities'. Not enough, say the Eelamists; terrorism
will continue."

Devananda exposed as the culprit – 8 years later by K.Mohandas

K.Mohandas, the then police chief of Tamil Nadu, who was a confidant
of MGR, exposed Devananda as the culprit of the 1984 kidnapping drama
in his 1992 book. Since, it was Mohandas who resolved the kidnapping
drama by his tactical reflex and ‘psychological bluff' [in Mohandas's
words], I'll let him describe how he got Devananda. I have highlighted
some specific sentences for emphasis. Here are the relevant passages,
spread in seven paragraphs:

"Mention must be made of an extraneous episode, when the
electioneering was in full swing, which attracted world attention.
American nationals, Stanley Allen and his wife Mary Allen, who were
working as water-resource experts under the UN Aid programme in Jaffan
(Sri Lanka), were kidnapped by unidentified persons who sent a message
to President Jayawardene, demanding a ransom of gold worth 50 million
dollars and release of 20 of their colleagues who were under
detention. The message also served an ultimatum that, if their demands
were not met within three days, the couple would be shot dead.

It was the U.S. Consul General in Madras who first broke the news to
me at about 11:00pm one night and appealed for my help. When I
wondered what I could possibly do about an incident in Sri Lanka, he
said that since I had been dealing with the Tamil militants problem,
he thought that I could use my expertise. I told him that I would try
to do what I could, but, in the meanwhile, the names of detainees
(whose release the kidnappers had demanded) could be ascertained and
passed on to me so that my officers might be able to identify the
militant group involved. Hardly had he rung up, when a call came
through from G.Parthasarathy, Chairman of the Foreign Policy Advisory
Committee in New Delhi, repeating the story and asking me to help. I
informed MGR who asked me to go all-out and get the hostages released.

It was a tall order, but, when some of the names of the detainees were
furnished by the American Consul-General, my officers quickly
ascertained from our files that they belonged to the PLA (People's
Liberation Army) which was the military wing of the EPRLF. A massive
search operation was immediately ordered to get at any of the leaders
of the PLA or the EPRLF present in Madras. Partly on information
furnished by a reliable source and partly by luck, we raided a house
in Madras city and – lo and behold! – the catch was beyond our wildest
dreams. There were six men and two women found sleeping. Among the men
were (1) Varadaraja Perumal, who later became Chief Minister of the
North-Eastern Council; (2) Padmanabha, the Chief of EPRLF, who was
killed, along with 13 others in Madras city in 1990, and (3) the
self-styled ‘General' Douglas, the ‘Chief of Staff' of the PLA. The
men were picked up for questioning, leaving the women behind.

They were taken to a big hotel and comfortably accomodated. Then the
grilling began, with only 10 hourse left for the threatened execution
of the Allen couple. They denied any knowledge but, when confronted
with the names of the detainees whose release was demanded, they
admitted that they belonged to the PLA. But they contended that their
followers could have acted on their own.

When the questioning did not yield any information beyond this, I
myself went to the hotel and, in typical dramatic style, told them
that whatever happened to the Allen couple in Jaffna would happen to
them right in the hotel room. ‘If they are shot', I told them, ‘you
will be shot right in this room. If they are released, you will be
released.' With four hours to go for the threatened killing of the
Allens, mine was purely a psychological bluff. It worked and ‘General'
Douglas got in touch with his contact in Jaffna right from the hotel
room and ordered the Allens' release in coded words.

Four hours and 68 cigarettes later (as I put it in a recent article),
news trickled in through our special channels, that the Allens were
left at the Jaffna Bishop's residence – blindfolded but without any
physical harm. My sigh of relief could be heard a mile away. The
President of the United States thanked and congratulated the Prime
Minister of India and the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. The latter had
a special word of praise for the team which worked round-the-clock and
behind the scenes to bring off a well-deserved coup.

MGR presented me with a wrist-watch with an in-built tape recorder. He
did not say what was the provocation, ut I surmised that it was for
the good work done in the Allens' rescue – an intelligence operation
which could not be officially recognized or rewarded…" [source: MGR –
The Man and the Myth, 1992, pp.91-93]

Now, to Devananda's net-bluff

Has anyone checked the profile of Devananda, which is featured in
theEPDP website? [www.epdpnews.com]. It corroborates few of the facts
presented in Mohandas's 1992 recollections. One sentence states, "In
the EPRLF, Douglas served as a member of the politbureau and as the
commander of its military wing, the People Liberation Army (PLA).
Another sentence informs, "In September 1983, he [Douglas, that is]
along with all the other Tamil political prisoners escaped from the
Batticaloa prison and fled to Tamil Nadu in India." Subsequent two
sentences reveal, "From India, in 1984, he was sent by the EPRLF for
advanced military training, and to lead a group of other EPRLF
members, both men and women, for training with the Democratic
Palestine Liberation Front (DPLF). Following the training, he returned
to North-East Sri Lanka and resumed charge as the commander of the
PLA."

About that world-news making kidnapping terrorism of American couple
in Jaffna which happened in May 1984 – which caused ripples in the
diplomatic circles in Washington DC, Madras and Colombo, Devananda's
profile in the net is sheepishly mum. To hell with the truth – as any
slimy politician would retort. But the young Douglas who wilted
against the psychological bluff – for fear of his life - of Mohandas
in Madras in 1984 has vanished now. His profile states, "Douglas
Devananda is a self-confident idealist, who is unique fighter against
fascism. He is kind, humble and simple, and a believer in humanism. He
is determined to serve his people, despite the fact that he has been
wounded, scarred and blinded in one eye, and compelled to live a life
in the shadow of death. [Updated 27th July 2002]." Either you believe
him or believe my word, that Devananda has indeed an unparalleled
‘record'. There hasn't been a professional cross-dresser and a
political scoundrel like Douglas Devananda among Eelam Tamils in the
past 20 years.