He fled home for good in 1972, killed Jaffna’s mayor three years later, and founded the LTTE in 1976, building it brick by brick. But growing Sinhalese obduracy turned a once-shy boy, whose school-time hobby was to kill birds and squirrels with a catapult, into a militant. In a matter of just a few hours, the Sri Lankan military juggernaut decimated and destroyed without mercy the entire Tamil Tiger leadership-this generation and every generation after that. In any case, the 1985 pledge would have made little difference if the son had fallen after the father. On, Sri Lankan soldiers determined to crush the LTTE got Prabahakaran’s equally chubby son even before the father could be found and targeted. But then his script went wrong more to the point, the Sri Lankan state tripped him. He also groomed the young Charles to take over from him one day. He did all this-and more-without remorse or mercy. Prabhakaran wiped out rival Tamils, took on the mighty Indian Army, blew up a Sri Lankan president, partially blinded another and assassinated a former Indian prime minister who had once handed him a bullet-proof jacket. Thousands died on both sides of the bitter ethnic divide.
After being schooled in Ireland, Charles Anthony, named after a fallen friend of his father, joined Prabhakaran in the impregnable jungles of Sri Lanka’s north for the cause of Tamil Eelam. He may have forcefully recruited scores of Tamil children against their will, but he did not spare his son either. True to his word, he carefully groomed a second generation in the very regimented LTTE, carefully picking men and women and training them in the art of warfare that transformed a once rag-tag group into an awesome killing machine.
Over the years, even as India turned against the man and his band it once armed and trained, Prabhakaran remained resolutely wedded to the cause of Tamil Eelam, killing countless Tamils and Sinhalese who came in his way.
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