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. The rest of the world might never understand the violence Prabhakaran stood for, but its imprint on Sri Lanka is wide and deep. More than 70,000 people have been killed in 26 years of war in Sri Lanka, and there are those who will not believe the elusive figure is gone until they see proof. For the generation of Sri Lankans who have grown up knowing only a nation in conflict, the image of Prabhakaran has loomed over their lives, either as enemy or savior. On May 19, the army released images to Sri Lankan television of Prabhakaran's body, still in its uniform, in which his face is clearly visible. The group came under fire, and Prabhakaran was one of 18 top LTTE leaders killed in the early-morning ambush, the government said. The end, when it came, happened in an armored vehicle in which Prabhakaran was trying to flee with his trusted lieutenants, according to the Sri Lankan government. In 2002, during a press conference near the beginning of a four-year cease-fire, Prabhakaran revealed that he had asked his aides to kill him if capture was near and he was unable to kill himself. 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 and east for decades. 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. Follow 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.
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