Page 2 of
2 Global hunt for Tigers'
assets By Ajit Kumar
Singh
declared the LTTE the
"second-most dangerous terrorist group" in the
world, after al-Qaeda.
Nevertheless, the
LTTE's international networks have suffered major
reverses in the recent past, with many instances
in which leaders and cadres of the LTTE or their
front organizations have been arrested, sentenced
to prison, or otherwise restrained, for a variety
of subversive activities across the world. Some of
the major incidents, in this context, include:
April 11, 2008: Counterterrorism police in
Quebec and Ontario in Canada reportedly shut down
the World Tamil Movement (WTM) office in Montreal,
alleging that the organization has been
raising money to finance
terrorist activities in Sri Lanka.
January 10, 2008: A US District Court in
Maryland sentenced Thirunavukarasu Varatharasa, a
Sri Lankan resident in the US, to 57 months in
prison and three years of supervised release, for
conspiracy to provide arms, ammunition and other
military materiel to the LTTE.
October 21, 2007: The Royal Canadian Mounted
Police's senior liaison officer for the Caribbean
disclosed that more than 100 people, including key
members of the LTTE, were arrested in the
Caribbean with fraudulent travel documents,
including Western passports forged with the aim of
entering the US and Canada.
September 25, 2007: French police arrested one
Ranjan, who was appointed by the LTTE to take
charge of LTTE activities in France after the
arrest of Parithi aka Nadarajah Mathienthiram, who
was earlier in charge of operations in this
country.
August 14, 2007: Three top LTTE suspects,
Sujit Gunapala, Sasiljaran Teverajah and
Satiepawan Arseawatap, were deported to Sri Lanka.
Gunapala, Teverajah and Arseawatap were arrested
from Ranong province in Thailand on May 12, 2003,
with 10 Glock pistols and three HK Mark 23
pistols, and had remained under detention in
Thailand for attempting to smuggle weapons to Sri
Lanka.
June 21, 2007: Arunachalam Chrishanthakumar
alias Shanthan, president of the British Tamil
Association and a high-ranking agent of the LTTE,
and head of finance, Goldan Lambert, were arrested
by British police under the 2000 Terrorism Act.
Subsequently, on July 5, 2007, a British court
froze all bank accounts belonging to Shanthan and
wife, whose business ventures, as on July 2, 2007,
amounted to $8 billion.
May 17, 2007: The Maldives coast guard opened
fire on and sank a small vessel carrying suspected
LTTE cadres after a 12-hour standoff at sea in the
southern territorial waters of Maldives. The boat
was carrying guns and mortar ammunition.
May 1, 2007: Australian police arrested two
suspected LTTE cadres, Aruran Vinayagamoorthy (who
had access to $526,000 in two bank accounts
between August 2001 and December 2005) and
Sivarajah Yathavan, after raids in Sydney and
Melbourne.
April 28, 2007: Six Sri Lankans, including the
prime accused, Satrubarajah Shanamugarajah alias
Ruby, connected to the LTTE, were convicted for
organized crime in Norway.
April 25, 2007: The "director" of the LTTE in
New York, Karunakaran Kandasamy, was arrested by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in
Queens, on charges of providing material support
to a foreign terrorist organization. An FBI raid
on Kandasamy's office in Queens revealed evidence
that he had raised millions of dollars for the
Tamil Tigers through a front organization called
the World Tamil Coordinating Committee.
April 1, 2007: The leader of the LTTE's France
branch since 2003, Nadarajah Mathinthiran alias
Parathi and Thuraisamy Jeyamorthy alias Jeya, who
are in charge of fundraising in France, were among
17 LTTE suspects arrested. During 2006, the LTTE
reportedly collected more than $10 million.
March 8, 2007: Haji Subandi, an international
arms dealer from Indonesia, pleaded guilty in a
federal court in Guam to conspiring to export
guns, surface-to-air missiles and other military
hardware to the LTTE.
August 30, 2006: Indonesian police arrested 13
LTTE suspects during a raid in the southern Java
coast. The suspects were reportedly moving to
Australia.
August 22, 2006: 13 suspects with close links
to the LTTE, including Waterloo Suresh aka Suresh
Skandarajah, were arrested from Buffalo, New York,
San Jose, California, Seattle, Washington and
Connecticut, following a Canadian police and FBI
probe into allegations that LTTE sympathizers in
North America tried to buy missiles and move
terror funds.
April 16, 2006: Canadian police raided the
office of the WTM in Montreal, the first raid
after the Canadian government proscribed the LTTE
as a terrorist group, and seized computers, files,
LTTE flags and other political documents.
The latest crackdown appears to be part of
an international operation aimed at neutralizing
the LTTE's operations worldwide. However,
proscribing the LTTE has tended to have only
limited success, since the organization simply
sets up new fronts that continue activities
earlier carried out directly by LTTE offices, or
by other fronts that come foul of the law.
Thus, after the TRO was banned in Britain,
fund collection for the LTTE was undertaken by a
charity named White Pigeon. Similarly, when the
Washington-based Intelsat Ltd banned the National
Television of Tamil Eelam, the official television
of the LTTE, on April 21-22, 2007, the LTTE
started its Paris-based Tamil Television Network,
a pay television channel owned by Globecast, which
was later shut down on May 3, 2007.
Even
the limited successes against the LTTE's
international operations in the recent past have
had tremendous impact on LTTE capacities on the
ground. Nevertheless, the LTTE's global network is
far from defunct, and the intelligence communities
in the many countries in which the Tamil rebels
operate fronts will have to keep pace with the
constant adaptation and inventiveness that remains
a hallmark of the LTTE's operations, both
domestically and abroad.
The Sri Lankan
ambassador to the US, Bernard Goonetilleke, in a
recent interview, noted that "a problem that is
taking place 10,000 miles away from the coast of
the US, is not a problem of Sri Lanka alone ...
Terrorist groups feed on each other".
Ajit Kumar Singh, research
assistant, Institute for Conflict Management.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
