Peter Madsen

 

Peter Langkjær Madsen (Danish: [ˈpʰe̝ˀtɐ ˈlɑŋˌkʰeˀɐ̯ ˈmæsn̩]; born 12 January 1971) is a Danish convicted murderer, former engineer and entrepreneur. In April 2018, he was convicted of the 2017 murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall on board his submarine, UC3 Nautilus, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Biography

Madsen was born in 1971 to Annie and Carl Madsen. He spent his early life in Sæby and Høng (both in Kalundborg Municipality), Denmark. Annie was more than 30 years younger than Carl and had three other boys from two previous men. Carl was allegedly abusive toward his three stepsons. Annie left when Peter was six, taking the children with her. After a couple of years, Madsen returned to his father, with whom he shared an interest in rockets.

While attending primary and secondary school in Høng, Madsen developed an interest in rocket fuel with the help of chemistry and physics teacher Johannes Fischer. He developed his first large rocket at Høng and launched it on 3 March 1986. It was one meter tall, modeled after the American ICBM MX Peacekeeper and built in his father's workshop. It reached a height of 100 m (330 ft) before crashing without harming anyone. In 1987, Madsen was accepted at the gymnasium (upper secondary school) in the nearby town of Kalundborg. He moved to live in a youth house in the town. His father died in 1990 when Peter was 18.

Madsen continued to experiment and to consult engineers, and became friendly with the family responsible for the fireworks in Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens. He also joined the Dansk Amatør Raket Klub (DARK) rocket club in Copenhagen, but the other members gradually became disillusioned with him. DARK members claimed that "saying his name would start the fire sprinkler system". He never finished any formal education, but took courses in welding and engineering to learn something about submarines. His enthusiasm brought impressive results, but also caused conflicts with others. Madsen funded his lifestyle through financial support from people, organizations, and enterprises which saw promise in him.

Personal life

Madsen was married at Copenhagen City Hall in November 2011. His wife had worked in the film industry and had also helped in Madsen's workshop at Refshaleøen, Copenhagen. In February 2018 it was reported that his wife had abandoned him. Madsen himself explained that he had lived in an "open relationship". His wife has chosen to remain anonymous and her identity has not been released by the media. According to a report from Wired magazine, Madsen was a regular at fetish parties.

In 2020, Madsen married 39-year old Russian-Mauritian opposition activist Jenny Curpen. Curpen has had political asylum in Finland since 2013, because of her persecution in Russia. In a post on Facebook, Curpen said that she received death threats after her marriage was made public.

Projects

Submarines

Madsen built three submarines: UC1 Freya, UC2 Kraka and UC3 Nautilus. The Nautilus was a privately built midget submarine, launched on 3 May 2008 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Constructed over three years, it cost approximately US$200,000 to build (1.5 million DKK).

Copenhagen Suborbitals

On 1 May 2008, Madsen co-founded Copenhagen Suborbitals with Danish Architect Kristian Von Bengtson. In June 2014, he left the project. Madsen was responsible for the launch system, launchpad and booster rocket engines.

Rocket Madsen Space Lab

In June 2014, Madsen established RML Spacelab ApS. The goal was the development and construction of a crewed spacecraft. From 2016, RML was developing a nano satellite launch vehicle using venture investments. Under the title Raket-Madsens Rumlaboratorium (Danish for 'Rocket-Madsen's Space Laboratory') Madsen has blogged about his activities on the web-site of the Danish news magazine Ingeniøren.

Murder of Kim Wall and sinking of UC3 Nautilus

Murder

On 11 August 2017, Madsen was arrested after the sinking of UC3 Nautilus and the disappearance of Kim Wall, a Swedish journalist who had last been seen alive aboard the submarine.

The following day, a court ruled that he be held in pre-trial detention for 24 days on a charge of negligent homicide. Madsen initially claimed that he disembarked Wall on land at the tip of Refshaleøen on the night before the sinking. He later changed his statement, saying that she had died on board in an accident, and that he had buried her at sea. According to the Danish police, the submarine was deliberately sunk, contradicting Madsen's explanation regarding a technical fault.

A human torso washed up on the coast of Amager on 21 August, which DNA tests concluded belonged to Wall.[29] Chief investigator Jens Møller reported that the torso had been stabbed multiple times to vent accumulating gases that could float it to the surface, and that a piece of metal had been fastened to it to ensure its sinking to the seabed. On 25 August, Madsen's charge was extended to improper handling of a corpse.

Trial and conviction

During a hearing on 5 September, Madsen stated that Wall had been killed when he lost his grip on the submarine's hatch cover, which he was holding open for her, and it hit her on the head, causing her skull to fracture. On 7 October 2017 Royal Danish Navy divers assisting the police found Wall's head, arms and legs, along with a knife and pieces of her clothing, in bags at the bottom of Køge Bay, weighted down by bits of metal. A police spokesperson reported that there were no fractures to Wall's skull.

A post-mortem examination of the torso found "knife wounds to her genitals and ribcage", believed to have been caused "around or shortly after her death". The prosecution said that police had found videos on Madsen's computer showing women being murdered, and that witnesses said that they had seen Madsen watching videos of decapitation and practicing asphyxiation sex. On 30 October 2017 it was reported that Madsen had changed his account of Wall's death and admitted dismembering her body.

It was reported that he now claimed that she had died from carbon monoxide poisoning on board the submarine, but his legal representation denied this, saying that Madsen did not know how she died. It was later confirmed by the police that he had made no clear statement on how she had died, but had said that she was inside the submarine when it contained exhaust gases.

In January 2018 Madsen was charged with murder, indecent handling of a corpse (due to dismemberment), and sexual assault (due to stabbings in genital region). The prosecution accused him of having bound, hit, cut and stabbed Wall before killing her by cutting her throat or strangling her. Madsen's trial began on 8 March 2018 with him pleading not guilty to Wall's murder. On 25 April 2018 Madsen was found guilty of all charges, and sentenced to life imprisonment. A psychiatric evaluation of Madsen described him as a narcissistic psychopath, lacking in empathy but not psychotic or delusional. Madsen immediately appealed the sentence but not the guilty verdict. On 26 September 2018, the Østre Landsret (High Court of Eastern Denmark) upheld the sentence.

Later events and escape

Madsen was admitted to the hospital in August 2018 after being assaulted by an 18-year-old inmate in Storstrøm Prison. Madsen was also in a relationship with a female prison guard, before she left.

On 20 October 2020 Madsen escaped from prison. He was arrested again in a nearby residential area, however, not far from Herstedvester Prison. When police discovered that he was in possession of a pistol-like object and was wearing a belt that could potentially contain explosives, he was surrounded until bomb experts had determined that it was a decoy. On 9 February 2021 a Copenhagen court handed down a 21-month prison sentence to Madsen, for his attempted escape from jail. The additional sentence will not be added to the life sentence, but may play a role if a probation request were ever made.

Media

It has been suggested that this section be split out into another article titled Into_the_Deep_(film). (Discuss) (April 2020)

On 24 January 2020, a Danish documentary, Into the Deep, premiered at the Sundance Festival in Utah, USA. The 90-minute documentary was directed by Australian-born Emma Sullivan and chronicles Peter Madsen and a group of volunteers helping Madsen with his projects – shot as it happens before, during, and after the murder of Kim Wall. Variety called the documentary "riveting". Marie Claire called it "gripping" and a "must-watch".

The documentary was initially intended to be distributed on Netflix. After a controversy arose, where participants claimed they did not give their consent to appear with their name and image, Netflix put it on hold. On 22 April 2020, Netflix announced they withdrew from the deal.

The Investigation (Efterforskningen) is a Danish-language television dramatization created by Tobias Lindholm, which follows the criminal investigation of the case. The six-part series premiered on 28 September 2020 on TV2 and SVT. It features Søren Malling as chief inspector Jens Møller, Pilou Asbæk as special prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen and Rolf Lassgård and Pernilla August as Wall's parents. The TV series does not feature the crime itself and does not mention Madsen's name, whose character does not appear onscreen either; it focuses on the investigative work leading to his indictment and conviction. It has been compared to the 2020 BBC series The Salisbury Poisonings. The series was broadcast on UK's BBC Two between 22 January and 5 February 2021. HBO began showing it on 1 February 2021.

Orville Lynn Majors

 

Orville Lynn Majors (April 24, 1961 – September 24, 2017) was a licensed practical nurse and serial killer, who was convicted of murdering his patients in Clinton, Indiana. Though he was only tried for seven murders and convicted of six, he was believed to have committed additional cases between 1993 and 1995, the period of time for which he was employed by the hospital where the deaths occurred, and for which he was investigated. It was reported that he murdered patients who he claimed were demanding, whiny, or disproportionately added to his work load.

Early life and career

Majors was born in Greenville, Kentucky in 1961. He took care of his elderly grandmother as a teen, and the experience led him to go into nursing. He graduated from Nashville Memorial School of Practical Nursing in 1989, and took a job at Vermillion County Hospital in Clinton, north of Terre Haute. He briefly took a higher-paying job in Tennessee, but returned to VCH in 1993.

Investigation

Majors was one of the most popular nurses at VCH, especially among elderly patients. He received glowing evaluations.

However, suspicion developed when the death rate at VCH jumped significantly after Majors returned to Indiana. In the year before his return to VCH, an average of around 26 patients died annually at the 56-bed hospital and four-bed intensive care unit. After Majors started working at the facility, however, this rate skyrocketed to more than 100 per year, with nearly one out of every three patients admitted to the hospital dying.

The circumstances of the deaths also raised eyebrows, even though most of them were elderly. Some died from an erratic heartbeat following respiratory arrest, a reverse of the normal pattern. Others died from conditions they did not have when they were admitted or took a sharp downturn despite being otherwise healthy. At the same time, patients began coding at an alarming rate.

Eventually, Majors' coworkers began noticing a correlation between the spike in deaths and when Majors was on duty, joking about when the next patient would die. However, in 1995, nursing supervisor Dawn Stirek was concerned enough to check the time cards to see who was on duty at the time of the deaths. She discovered that Majors was on duty for 130 of 147 deaths between 1993 and 1995. Alarmed, she alerted hospital officials, who called in the Indiana State Police. Majors was suspended pending investigation. The Indiana State Nursing Board suspended Majors' license for five years after it determined he had exceeded his authority by giving emergency drugs and working in an ICU without a doctor, and VCH fired him.

Investigators subsequently determined that when Majors was on duty, there was an average of one death every 23 hours, or almost one death per day–a pattern that held when he worked on weekdays or weekends. When he was off duty, the death rate dropped to one every 23 days. They also determined that a patient at VCH was 42 times more likely to die when Majors was on duty.

Majors adamantly denied wrongdoing. While running a pet store in his hometown of Linton, he hired a lawyer and made the rounds of talk shows to proclaim his innocence. Prosecutors and the state police were hamstrung at first; while they believed from the beginning that Majors was a killer, they could not prove how he did it. However, after Majors began his public relations offensive, several relatives of patients who died at VCH called the state police to report suspicious behavior on Majors' part before their loved ones died. They recalled that their loved ones either coded or died within minutes of Majors giving them injections, in some cases before he left the room.

The state police medical team noticed several patients' heart patterns widening around the time Majors was on duty. They called in electrophysiologist Eric N. Prystowsky to look at the EKGs. He suspected that there were only three explanations for these patterns–a potassium overdose, a sudden heart attack, or a large clot in the lung. With this in mind, in September 1995, state officials began exhuming 15 patients who had been witnessed getting injections and had widening heart patterns around the time they died. None of the bodies had signs of a heart attack or clotting in the lung, which proved they had been murdered. After a former roommate recalled seeing potassium chloride and epinephrine vials in their house, police obtained a search warrant and discovered numerous vials that could be traced back to the hospital.

Prosecution and trial

After a two-year investigation, Majors was arrested in December 1997 and charged with seven murders. As mentioned above, investigators believed he killed 100 to 130 people. However, prosecutors chose to focus on just seven to keep from overwhelming the jury. A total of 79 witnesses were called to the stand at his trial in 1999. Some of the witnesses testified that he hated elderly people, and that he believed that they "should be gassed."

Majors was convicted on October 17 for six murders; the jury deadlocked on a seventh because the victim took longer to die than the others. He was sentenced to six consecutive terms of 60 years, the maximum possible penalty under Indiana law at the time, virtually assuring that he would die in prison. Presiding judge Ernest Yelton described Majors' crimes as "diabolical acts" and "a parallel of evil at its most wicked," and concluded that "the maximum sentence is the minimum sentence in this case."

Aftermath

VCH, which had been renamed West Central Community Hospital after ousting Majors, was slapped with wrongful-death suits by the families of 80 patients who died at Majors' hands. Most of them settled the suits and were compensated by a state patients' fund. The hospital was subsequently fined $80,000 for negligence and code violations, and was briefly forced to shut down after losing its accreditation. By 2009, it had been taken over by Terre Haute-based Union Hospital and renamed Union Hospital Clinton.

Majors appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court, which let the verdict stand in 2002. He served his sentence at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, where he died of heart failure on September 24, 2017 while arguing with correctional staff, Officer R. Houston.

Television

The story of the police investigation and prosecution of Majors is featured in a segment of an episode of The New Detectives entitled "Broken Trust" (Season 9, Episode 11).

The story was also covered in an episode of Oxygen's License To Kill, entitled "Lethal Injections."

Majors' crimes were also discussed at length in the Infamous Murders episode "Angels of Death".

Lalith Athulathmudali

 

Lalith William Samarasekera Athulathmudali, PC (Sinhala: ලලිත් ඇතුලත්මුදලි; 26 November 1936 – 23 April 1993), known as Lalith Athulathmudali, was a Sri Lankan statesman. He was a prominent member of the United National Party, who served as Minister of Trade and Shipping; Minister National Security and Deputy Minister of Defence; Minister of Agriculture, Food and Cooperatives and finally Minister of Education. Following a failed impeachment of President Ranasinghe Premadasa, he was removed from the UNP and formed his own party, the Democratic United National Front. He was assassinated under mysterious circumstances in 1993.

Early life and education

Born to a family of lawyers hailing from Kaluthara District, his father D. D. Athulathmudali was a member of the State Council of Ceylon and his mother was Srimathi Samarasekera Athulathmudali. He had two siblings, a brother Dayanthe who became an electrical engineer and a sister Sujaee who became a Physician.

Athulathmudali received his primary education at St. John's College Panadura and Royal Primary School; before moving to Royal College Colombo from 1948 to 1955 for his secondary educated, where he won the Steward Prize and excelled in athletics.

He then went on to read jurisprudence at Jesus College, Oxford from 1955 to 1958. He graduated with a BA in 1958 and continued his post-graduate studies at Oxford. In 1959, his father died and he had to return due to a lack of funds. S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike on hearing his case, provided him with a Ceylon Government Scholarship. He gained a BCL and MA in 1960 from Oxford winning the Lord Sanky Prize in 1959. While at Oxford, Athulathmudali joined the Oxford Union, serving as its Secretary (1956), Treasurer (1957) and became the first Sri Lankan to become its President in 1958. In 1962 he entered Harvard Law School on scholarship and graduated from Harvard University with a LLM in 1963. He was fluent in Sinhalese, English, Tamil, German and French.

Academic and legal career

Athulathmudali was admitted to the bar as a Barrister from the Gray's Inn in 1959. From 1960 to 1962 he served as a law lecturer at the University of Singapore. In 1963 he became the Associate Dean of the legal faculty of the University of Singapore. From 1960 to 1964 he had served as a visiting lecturer at the Hebrew University in Israel, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Allahabad. Returning to Ceylon in 1964, he took oaths as an Advocate and started his legal practice. From 1967 to 1974, he was the lecturer in jurisprudence at the Ceylon Law College. In 1985 he was appointed a President's Counsel.

Political career

Minister of Trade and Shipping

Lalith Athulathmudali entered politics in the early 1970s. He joined the policy planning committee of the United National Party in 1973. He contested the 1977 general election from the Ratmalana electorate and was elected to Parliament. J.R. Jayewardene appointed him to his cabinet as Minister of Trade. In 1978, he received the additional portfolio of shipping, as Minister of Trade and Shipping, which he held till 1984. During this time, as Minister of Trade, he introduced Intellectual Property Law; established the Sri Lanka Export Development Board and the Ports Authority. He established the Mahapola Trust Fund in 1981 to provision of financial assistance to students undertaking higher education.

Minister of National Security

In 1984, he was appointed Minister of National Security and Deputy Minister of Defense. He started reforms in both the police and army. During his tenure the armed forces were expanded and reequipped, with the army increasing from 6,000 to 24,000. The most controversial of his measures was to call for Israeli assistance. He organized several offensives against territories held by the LTTE including the Vadamarachchi Operation and was apposed to the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord.

He was severely wounded in a grenade attack inside the Parliament complex in 1987. The biggest debacle of his political career came in May 1988 when he declared a truce with the rebellion JVP. The main brokers of the so-called truce were a lawyer called Kelly Senanayake and Fr Thissa Balasooriya who later found had no mandate to represent JVP. He received the portfolio of Trade and Shipping again in 1988. His status in government changed upon Jayewardene's retirement in 1988, he tried to obtain the UNP's nomination for the presidential election, but was defeated by Ranasinghe Premadasa who went on to win the presidency.

Minister of Agriculture and Education

In 1989, he was appointed UNP chief organizer for the Colombo electorate and was elected to parliament in the 1989 general election. Premadasa retained Athulathmudali in his cabinet, but demoted him by appointing him as Minister of Agriculture, Food and Cooperatives. In the following year, he was appointed as Minister of Education, in which capacity he remained until 1991.

Conflict with Premadasa

Athulathmudali became disenchanted with Premadasa's leadership. Soon Athulathmudali ran into conflict with Premadasa. Premadasa tried to have Athulathmudali removed from his UNP party positions. He was accused by Premadasa as being one of the cabinet ministers behind the Burning of Jaffna library in 1981. Athulathmudali resigned from his cabinet position in August 1991 and in September 1991 he and several UNP MPs brought forth a motion to impeach Premadasa. The impeachment which was supported by members of the UNP and other parties in the opposition failed as Premadasa adjourned Parliament and the Speaker Mohamed dismissed the impeachment stating a lack of signatures. Premadasa expelled Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake from the UNP.

Athulathmudali together with Dissanayake formed a new party, the Democratic United National Front with both serving as joint president in November 1991. Under the DUNF, Athulathmudali handed over his papers to contest the 1993 Provincial elections seeking the chief ministership of the Western Province Council.

Assassination

Athulathmudali was assassinated when he was shot by a gunman on 23 April 1993 after an election rally at Kirulapana. Initially, the government blamed the LTTE and produced the body of a Tamil youth named Ragunathan which was found near the scene of the shooting the following day. He had apparently died from taking a cyanide capsule. However, these claims were later proved to be false.

A Presidential Commission carried out by the Sri Lankan Government concluded that Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa was directly responsible for the assassination. It also concluded that the Tamil youth Ragunathan, was murdered by the same people who killed Athulathmudali, by forcibly administering him with cyanide.

Family

Athulathmudali's was first married to the Parsi Perin E. Captain. She was the president of the Sri Lanka Cancer Society. Lalith, with a penchant for older women, was eventually caught cheating and then met his second wife Srimani De Seram in March 1978 when she was attached to UNCTAD in Switzerland. She was a friend of his brother Dayantha Athulathmudali. After a romance that lasted several years, during which Athulathmudali had several paramours, they got married in December 1981 in Geneva. They had one daughter, Serela Athulathmudali.

Historical reputation and legacy

Athulathmudali is considered one of the most distinguished Sri Lankan statesmen in recent history. He is still remembered by many in Sri Lanka as a gentlemen and as one of the few well educated politicians of that era. In his honour a statue and memorial has been erected in Colombo. His contribution to the education of the country is eminence, the Mahapola Fund he established has greatly contributed to the development of higher education and provides scholarships for needy students annually. The Lalith Athulathmudali Auditorium at the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology and the Lalith Athulathmudali Memorial Prize which is one of the prestigious prizes awarded annually at Royal College, Colombo (his alma mater) (awarded for the Most Outstanding Royalist (Student of Royal College) of the Year) are named in his honour.

Monuments and memorials

The statue of Lalith William Samarasekera Athulathmudali is located at 6°54′21.7″N 79°51′33.2″E in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Hugo Schenk

 

Hugo Schenk (February 11, 1849 – April 22, 1884), was an Austrian serial killer and imposter who murdered four maids with the help of his accomplice, Karl Schlossarek (1858 – 1884).

Activities

Hugo Schenk was born into a well-off family as a son of a judge working in Cieszyn. His brother worked as a community doctor in Maria Taferl. In 1869 and 1870 he began his criminal life as an escapee from the henchmen of the Tsar from Warsaw, Prince Boleslav von Wilopolsky, and was tried as a marriage swindler to get the dowry of the alleged brides. Sentenced on December 5, 1870, to a five-year stay at the Mírov detention center for a number of serious frauds, but was pardoned and released after two years.

At the age of 32, he was once again convicted of marital fraud for two years in a heavy dungeon at the Stein Prison. In prison he met Karl Schlossarek, who was imprisoned for theft. After his release in January 1883 Schenk met the 34-year old Josefine Timal, who worked as a maid in Vienna, where he worked as a railway engineer and promised her marriage. Timal gave into his confidence, quit her job, packed all her valuables and traveled with him to their alleged honeymoon in Kraków. However, he raped her near the Hranice Abyss. With the help of Schlossarek, he gagged and tied Timal, robbed her of valuables and sank her with a heavy stone into the abyss.

Because Schenk was of the opinion that her aunt Katharina, who worked as a maid in Budweis, could notice her niece's disappearance, he also planned to kill her. He wrote to her that he had married Josefine and invited her to his estate. On June 21, 1883, he picked her up from the station and took her to Krummnußbaum, where he overpowered and killed her along the banks of the Danube, along with Schlossarek. After taking all her valuables, they sank Katharina into the Danube. Only six weeks later Schenk murdered the maid Theresia Ketterl in a gorge in Lilienfeld to get her valuables. On December 28, 1883, the duo murdered and buried maid Rosa Ferenczi in the Danube at Kittenish to rob her.

Execution

On January 10, 1884, Hugo Schenk was arrested, and just a day later - Karl Schlossarek. Both were sentenced to death by hanging and executed on April 22, 1884, in Court No. 1 of the Vienna Regional Court.

Legacy

The skull of Hugo Schenk, which was autopsied and neurologically examined after the execution by Viennese neurologist Moritz Benedikt, is in the Vienna Criminal Museum. The writer Egon Kisch (1885 - 1948) has dealt with the story of a woman who survived Schenk's attack.

Literature

Ludwig Altmann: Hugo Schenk und seine Genossen. (= Aus dem Archiv des grauen Hauses – Eine Sammlung merkwürdiger Wiener Straffälle, Band 2). Wien-Leipzig-München 1925.

Moriz Benedikt, Rudolf Frank: Anthropologischer Befund bei dem Mörder Hugo Schenk. In: Wiener Medizinische Blätter, XIV. Jg., Nr. 1 (1885).

Michael Kirchschlager: Der Mädchenmörder Hugo Schenk. Historische Kriminal-Bibliothek, Band 1. ISBN 3-934277-15-2

Egon Erwin Kisch: Eine Frau, die auf Hugo Schenk wartet. In: Ders.: Prager Pitaval. Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben. Hrsg. von Bodo Uhse und Gisela Kisch. II/2. Berlin/Weimar: Aufbau, 1975, S. 34–44.

Proceß des Mädchenmörders Hugo Schenk und seiner Genossen, verhandelt in Wien im März 1884 vor dem Ausnahmegerichte. Nach authentischen Berichten bearbeitet. Wien 1883.

Bernhard Purin: Hugo Schenk – Ein Heiratsschwindler und Serienmörder zu Besuch in Rosenburg. In: Horner Kalender 2015 (Verlag Ferdinand Berger & Söhne), S. 93–103.

The Sri Lanka Car Bombings

 

The Colombo central bus station bombing was the car bombing of the central bus terminal of Colombo carried out on April 21, 1987 in Pettah, Colombo, Sri Lanka. The 80-pound (36 kg) bomb killed 113 people and left a 10-foot (3 m) crater in the ground.

The 2008 Sri Lanka roadside bombings were two separate roadside bombings that killed 32 people and injured 62 others on January 16, 2008. The first roadside bomb was aimed towards a civilian bus, with gunmen shooting at fleeing survivors and then retreating into the bush, killing farmers who encountered them. The second roadside bomb was aimed towards a military vehicle, injuring three soldiers. The Sri Lankan Government has blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for the attacks.

The Fort railway station bombing was a suicide bombing of a commuter train while it was stopped at the Fort railway station, the main station in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on February 3, 2008. The bombing killed 12 civilians and injured more than 100. Killed in the attack were eight school children of D. S. Senanayake College's baseball team and their coach/teacher-in-charge.

The government said that the attack was carried out by a female suicide bomber, belonging to LTTE, who got down from a train and exploded during rush hour on Platform 3.

Secretary of Defence Gotabaya Rajapaksa directed the Criminal Investigation Department to investigate the bombing which led to the arrest of two suspects alongside explosives hidden in Colombo and the discovery of small business premises run by a LTTE cell. The cell leader had left the country after the bombing.

The Madhu School bus bombing also known as Thadchanamadhu claymore attack was the bombing of a school bus carried out on January 29, 2008 in rebel LTTE controlled area in Thadchanamadhu in Mannar, Northern province of Sri Lanka. The bombing killed 17 Tamils, including 11 school children, and injured at least 14 more people. The LTTE and NESHOR accused the Sri Lankan Army ’s deep penetration unit for the attack but the Army denied the allegations. This attack was the second attack on a civilian bus in the month of January in Sri Lanka

Background

On January 02 2008, the government of Sri Lanka officially pulled out of the cease fire signed in 2002.The area lies near the border between Sri Lankan Army and rebel LTTE controlled areas and around 22 claymore attacks had taken place earlier killing 62 people. Students were returning from Mannar Sinapandivirichchan Government Tamil Mixed School travel through this route daily.

Incident

On 29 January 2008 a bus carrying civilians was hit by a claymore mine that resulted in the death of 17 civilians including 11 school children and injuring 14 more people. This incident took place in the town of Mannar about 1 km from the Madhu Church which is a LTTE rebel controlled area. Tamilnet reported that the civilian bus was hit by a claymore that was triggered by Sri Lankan Army’s deep penetration unit. It further claimed that the victims were students and teachers returning from a sporting event. The Sri Lankan Army denied any responsibility and claimed that there was no military unit operating in the area at that time.

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