Word: leader
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...Charlie is a patriot, a leader and a visionary, who understands the workings of NASA and the importance of America remaining a leader in science and technology through space exploration." -Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, in a written statement. (Bloomberg...
Velupillai Prabhakaran, 54, the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who was declared killed by the Sri Lankan government on May 18, had decades to think about how his end would come. It could have come from the cyanide capsule that he - like many Tiger fighters - wore around his neck, a pledge to commit suicide in case of capture by the Sri Lankan army. He had been fighting a war for an independent homeland, or eelam, for the island's Tamil minority since 1983, and the army had pursued him throughout the jungles of the north...
...rest of the world might never understand the violence Prabhakaran stood for, but its imprint on Sri Lanka is wide and deep. At the height of his power, just before the 2002 cease-fire, Prabhakaran was the unquestioned leader of a de facto government that controlled more than 15,000 sq km of territory in the north and east of Sri Lanka and had its own system of taxes, roads and courts. By the final weeks of conflict, he was believed to be using thousands of Tamil civilians as human shields against the advance of the Sri Lankan military...
...Prabhakaran's life as a fugitive began in 1975, with the assassination of Alfred Duraiappah, then mayor of the northern city of Jaffna. A group calling itself the Tamil New Tigers, of which Prabhakaran was a leader, claimed responsibility. The next year, Prabhakaran founded the LTTE. What began as a guerrilla movement escalated into full-scale civil war in July 1983. The LTTE killed 13 Sri Lankan army troops in an ambush in Jaffna. In retaliation, as many as 3,000 Tamils, mainly in Colombo, were killed in several days of violence at the end of July. Human-rights groups...
...Prabhakaran's trusted lieutenants - intelligence head Pottu Amman and Sea Tiger leader Soosai - were also killed in the ambush. "LTTE terrorists made their final bid to evacuate its leaders early this morning as army élites pierced in to the last remaining LTTE foothold last night," the Defense Ministry said in a statement later in the day. "The terrorists managed to take hold of two vehicles and [are] believed to have put their senior leaders into those vehicles before they started moving northward." (See pictures of Sri Lanka's rebel-held territory...