Balachandran Prabhakaran (1 October 1996 – 19 May 2009) was the third child of

Velupillai Prabhakaran Velupillai Prabhakaran (; ta, வேலுப்பிள்ளை பிரபாகரன்; , (26 November 1954 – 18 May 2009) was a Sri Lankan Tamil guerrilla and the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ...

, the founder and leader of the

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; ta, தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள், translit=Tamiḻīḻa viṭutalaip pulikaḷ, si, දෙමළ ඊළාම් විමුක්ති කොටි, t ...

movement. He was murdered by Sri Lanka forces after surrendering during the final phase of the Sri Lankan Civil War in May 2009. The

Sri Lankan military The Sri Lanka Armed Forces is the overall unified military of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka encompassing the Sri Lanka Army, the Sri Lanka Navy, and the Sri Lanka Air Force; they are governed by the Ministry of Defence (Sri Lank ...

claims he was killed in cross fire during a battle. In 2013, leaked images showed Balachandran Prabhakaran, apparently in the custody of the Sri Lankan military. Subsequent images showed him dead, having been shot up to five times in the chest. According to Callum Macrae, director of the documentary

No Fire Zone ''No Fire Zone: In the Killing Fields of Sri Lanka'' is an investigative documentary about the final weeks of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The documentary covers the period from September 2008 until the end of the war in 2009 in which thousands of ...

: "The new photographs are enormously important evidentially because they appear to rule out any suggestion that Balachandran was killed in cross-fire or during a battle. They show he was held, and even given a snack, before being taken and executed in cold blood." The group

Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) is a group of journalists, human rights workers and other activists exiled from Sri Lanka based in Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europ ...

has stated that the images are proof the child was executed soon after being captured.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Prabhakaran, Balachandran 2009 deaths Sri Lankan murder victims Human rights abuses in Sri Lanka People murdered in Sri Lanka Tamil Eelam Sri Lankan Tamil people 1996 births