A prominent Tamil journalist whose articles favored the mainstream Tamil Tiger rebels over a breakaway faction was fatally shot after being seized by attackers at a restaurant in the capital, police and colleagues said Friday. Dharmeratnam Sivaram, 46, a board member of the pro-rebel TamilNet Web site and a columnist for Sri Lanka's English newspaper Daily Mirror, was abducted by four unidentified men at the restaurant in Colombo late Thursday and taken away in a jeep, witnesses said on condition of anonymity. His body was found Friday with gunshot wounds to the head in a shrub near a lake, police officer Ashoka Gunasekara said. A colleague and family members confirmed the identity of the body, which was gagged with a red-and-white napkin, The Associated Press reported. No one claimed responsibility for the killing.
