UK transfers renegade Tamil Tiger

A former leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels who was jailed in the UK in January has been transferred to an immigration detention centre.
Col Karuna was sent to jail in January for identity fraud after being arrested in London late last year.He was carrying an apparently genuine Sri Lankan diplomatic passport issued under a false name.It is not clear if he will be deported. Human rights groups want him charged with war crimes.The British Home Office refused to give details of Col Karuna's case.A spokeswoman would only tell the BBC that he "remains detained under immigration powers".He had served half of a nine-month sentence after being found guilty of identity fraud.Col Karuna's lawyer, David Phillips, says he has not claimed asylum so far and although he could apply from the detention centre his chances would not be very high because he failed to declare his intention to seek asylum immediately upon arrival in the UK.

British 'concern'

During his UK court case, Col Karuna said he had received the false diplomatic passport from the Sri Lankan government.He said the defence secretary in Colombo, who is also the brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, had arranged the documents for him.Col Karuna, whose real name is V Muralitharan, was arrested on 2 November at a flat in the London district of Kensington.The British Foreign Office said in December that it had told the Sri Lankan government of its "concern" at how Col Karuna had acquired a diplomatic passport under a false name.Sri Lanka's government denies it has any links to Col Karuna.

Fighting intensified

Col Karuna is one of the most controversial figures in Sri Lanka's prolonged civil war.He was the commander of the Tamil Tiger rebels in eastern Sri Lanka until 2004, when he changed sides and started fighting alongside government forces.Troops under his command - both before and after he changed sides - are accused of torture, murder and the recruitment of child soldiers.Human rights groups have urged the British government to try him for war crimes. But they say witnesses have been unwilling to come forward to testify against him.Both the Tiger rebels and the Sri Lankan military have faced repeated accusations of gross human rights abuses.Fighting in the north of the island this year has intensified after the army drove the rebels out of their eastern strongholds last year.

In January the government formally withdrew from a ceasefire which both sides were supposed to be observing, even though fighting grew steadily worse last year.

Source: BBC

Heavy fighting claims 66 lives in Sri Lanka: military

At least 64 Tamil Tiger rebels and two Sri Lankan soldiers have been killed in the latest battles in the island's north, according to the defence ministry on Thursday.

It said the two days of fighting on Tuesday and Wednesday occurred in the Vavuniya, Mannar and Weli Oya areas, from where government forces are trying to push into the guerrillas' northern mini-state.

There was no immediate comment from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The latest casualties raise to 3,471 the number of LTTE cadres the defence ministry says have been killed since the start of the year. It has admitted losing 261 soldiers in the same period.

Information from the front line cannot be independently verified since Colombo prevents media and rights groups from visiting the embattled areas.

Source: AFP

UN watchdog groups denounce 5 nations (including Sri lanka) vying to join rights council

Five countries trying to win seats on the UN Human Rights Council - Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Gabon and Zambia - fail to protect human rights and should be disqualified from membership, two watchdog groups said in a report.

But the groups, Freedom House and UN Watch, said Tuesday that Gabon and Zambia are virtually guaranteed seats because candidates are chosen by regional groups and Africa has an uncontested slate in the election, scheduled for May 21.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, which is based in Geneva, criticized democratic countries in Africa and elsewhere for failing to compete for seats on the council, where they could become advocates for human rights.

"Instead, they lend international credibility to repressive governments that routinely violate the rights of their own citizens," Neuer said in a statement.

Freedom House, based in New York, promotes human rights worldwide, while UN Watch monitors the international body's performance based on its charter. Both evaluated the 20 candidates for council seats on their records of promoting human rights at home and at the United Nations.

Their report gave "questionable" ratings to three candidates with mixed human rights records - Brazil, East Timor and Burkina Faso.

"Qualified" ratings were given to Ghana, Japan, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Argentina, Chile, France, Spain and Britain.

The Human Rights Council was created in March 2006 to replace the widely discredited and highly politicized Human Rights Commission, and one aim was to keep some of the worst human rights offenders out of its membership. But the council has been widely criticized for failing to change many of the commission's practices, including putting much more emphasis on Israel than on any other country.

The United States was virtually alone in voting against the establishment of the council, and Washington has chosen to remain off the council.

The Geneva-based council is composed of regional groups that give dominance to Africa and Asia, each with 13 countries.

The council's current membership includes Cuba, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia, whose human rights records have been widely criticized. Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Gabon and Zambia, whose rights records were called "dismal" on Tuesday, are also members.

Source: IHT

43 killed in Sri Lanka clashes

At least 41 LTTE cadres and two civilians were killed as fierce clashes broke out between the Tiger rebels and security forces in the volatile northern Sri Lanka, official said here on wednesday. At least two LTTE cadres were killed in Sittaru in northern Sri Lanka during clashes with the army on Tuesday, officials said.

The Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) denied reports that LTTE has overrun an army camp at Sittaru in Ellakantale.

Meanwhile, two civilians were killed when a claymore bomb planted by suspected rebel tigers exploded near the Vavuniya Municipal grounds on Tuesday, the MCNS said. As many as five LTTE cadres were killed in Matottam in Mannar during clashes with the security forces on Tuesday, the defence ministry said.

Separately, troops said it had killed six Tiger rebels who were travelling in a tractor in Periyamadu in North-east of Vavuniya on Tuesday.

At least seven rebels were shot dead in clashes with security forces in Palampiddy in Vavuniya on Tuesday, the ministry said. In another confrontation, the security forces gunned down seven LTTE rebels during an offensive in Alankulam in Mannar on Tuesday, the MCNS said, adding in another clash they shot dead one Tamil tiger at Palampiddi in the region Mannar on Tuesday.

Source: Hindu

More time to question Tamil three

DETECTIVES were yesterday granted another eight days to question three men suspected of raising funds for a banned terrorist group.

City of Westminster magistrates gave police permission to hold the three men, aged 33, 39 and 46, until next Tuesday. Two of them were arrested in Powys.

They are suspected of raising funds for the Tamil Tigers, who have waged three decades of guerrilla fighting in Sri Lanka.

Police staged a series of early morning raids in Wales and London last Tuesday.

Government officials and senior police officers believe large sums of money are collected in Britain to fund Tamil Tiger attacks.

Members of the group are suspected of credit card fraud and extortion.

The two aged 39 and 46 were arrested at separate addresses in Newtown, and the third man, aged 33, was held in Mitcham, London.

Source: icwales

New fighting in Sri Lanka kills 16 rebels, 2 soldiers

Clashes broke out between government forces and ethnic Tamil separatists across northern Sri Lanka, killing 16 rebels and two soldiers, the military said Tuesday.

In the worst of the fighting Monday, nine rebels were killed during a series of battles in the Vavuniya district, the military said in a statement.

The military also accused the rebels of targeting a leading Buddhist monk in the north with a roadside bomb. The cleric was uninjured, the military said.

Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan was not immediately available for comment.

It was not possible to independently verify the military's claims because the media are banned from the northern jungles where much of the fighting takes place. Both sides commonly exaggerate their enemy's casualties while underplaying their own.

The military, which has promised to crush the rebels by the end of the year, also said it captured about 1 square kilometer (0.39 sq. mile) of rebel-held territory in the Mannar area.

The Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for an independent homeland for minority ethnic Tamils, who have been marginalized for decades by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting.

The newly announced battles broke out as the warring sides fought two other battles in the north. The rebels said they killed eight soldiers in the Muhamalai area Monday and three sailors in Mannar. The government said it killed 10 rebels, while two soldiers were killed and another was missing from the fighting.

Source: gmanews

Tiger leader sought $3M from Canada

RCMP counterterrorism investigators in Toronto have seized a letter signed by the leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers guerrillas directing Canadian Tamils to send him $3-million, according to police files released yesterday by the Federal Court.

The rebel leader's letter, found during a search of the Toronto office of the World Tamil Movement, discusses the need to "intensify the struggle" and ensure that Tamils are "strong enough" to fight "with our full breath," according to the newly unsealed files.

Velupillai Prabhakaran adds that he looks "forward to receiving substantial contribution from the displaced people of Tamil Eelam" and advises the "Canadian office" to provide 15 of the 100 "crores" he needs. A crore is the equivalent of just over $200,000.

The RCMP cited the 2002 letter as evidence the WTM is the "Canadian branch" of the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group fighting a civil war against Sri Lankan government forces. The Tigers want an independent ethnic Tamil state.

Also known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, the Tigers are an outlawed terrorist group in Canada because of tactics that include suicide bombings and political killings. But many Canadian Tamils say the Tigers are freedom fighters defending the country's ethnic Tamil minority against state terror.

The solicitation from Mr. Prabhakaran is contained in hundreds of pages of materials the RCMP took to a Federal Court judge last month as part of an application to seize the WTM's bank accounts. The judge approved the seizures.

The documents remained sealed until yesterday, although some parts remain blacked out. Last Friday, the courts released documents concerning a related investigation into the WTM office in Montreal.

The documents detailing the Montreal and Toronto terrorist financing investigations (some of which were revealed in the National Post on Saturday and Monday) provide the first indication the Canadian Tamil groups serve as "foreign branches" of the guerrillas, police claim.

The documents also spell out the money trail, showing how the WTM has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in Quebec and Ontario and shipped it overseas, allegedly to pay for arms and other materials for the Tamil independence struggle -- although WTM officials deny the claims and no charges have been laid.

"As a result of my four-year involvement with this investigation, I believe that the World Tamil Movement is involved in terrorist financing activities in Canada," according to an affidavit by RCMP Corporal DeAnna Hill, a member of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team in Ontario.

Cpl. Hill says the WTM uses everything from bake sales to the sale of Tamil Tigers paraphernalia to generate money. But the investigation, called Project Osaluki, also uncovered one lucrative "terrorist financing scheme" that targets Canadian Tamils who visit Sri Lanka, she says.

Travelling Canadian Tamils who try to enter Tamil Tigers-held territory in Sri Lanka are taken aside and pressured into signing a pre-authorized payment form allowing the WTM to make a monthly withdrawal from their bank account, the police documents say.

"These persons, out of fear, compliance or empathy, completed a pre-authorized payment form at a checkpoint operated or enforced by the LTTE in Sri Lanka," Cpl. Hill writes. "Upon their return to Canada, these persons were visited by representatives of the World Tamil Movement to exact the collection of the stipend."

Some of the forms were seized by the Canada Border Services Agency. Police also interviewed those who signed them. The close co-operation on the scheme between the LTTE in Sri Lanka and WTM in Toronto shows an "inextricable link" between the two, she says.

"Moreover, I believe this sequence of events provides irrefutable evidence that the World Tamil Movement acts on behalf of the LTTE in Canada and participates in active fundraising for the LTTE."

The Canadian government outlawed terrorist financing in 2001. The investigation into the WTM Toronto branch began on April 22, 2002, and climaxed with a police raid in 2006.

The case, together with the related probe in Montreal, marks the first time Canadian police have gone to court to seize real estate and bank accounts because of alleged involvement in terrorist financing.

Source: nationalpost

Explosives' seizures worry Tamil Nadu cops

Discoveries of explosives' caches in two Tamil Nadu districts Sunday worried state police officials on a day the US government indicated increased Maoist activity in Tamil Nadu since last year.

Home ministry sources here admitted that a PMK worker K. Ilanchezhiyan was taken into custody in Kanchipuram district 60 km from here for illegally possessing several country made bombs.

Prem Anand Sinha, Perambalur district superintendent of police, said on telephone that a huge stash of unaccounted explosives was seized from a stone quarry following an explosion that killed one person.

"We are worried at instances of unrecorded explosives cropping up in the state, but are hopeful of success within a week," a top official told IANS.

The two incidents were reported within a 250 km southward radius of capital Chennai.

Significantly, two persons died in an explosion last year in Ilanchezhiyan's farm.

The US government had said that there were 971 instances of Maoist activities in India during the first seven months in 2007.

In July 2007, a civic official was killed when an IED went off under his car in Sivaganga (constituency of Finance Minister P. Chidambaram) within days of newspaper reports alleging presence of over 600 Maoists in the foothills of the Western Ghats on Tamil Nadu's border with Kerala, 400 km south of Chennai. Four of them were caught by alert locals.

Top police officials denied links between Sunday's incidents and increased extreme left-wing political activity in the state - though three Maoists were killed in encounters in Tamil Nadu during the last 35 days.

Significantly, Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi chided PMK founder Ramadoss Saturday for repeatedly being an impediment to the state's developmental activities following the latter's verbal assault against creation of Special Economic Zones to benefit major business houses, a well-known left-wing stand.

The left, along with PMK, prop up the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam regime in Tamil Nadu.

Statistics provided by the state government admit that 87 cases have been registered against "agent provocateurs" owing allegiance to the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam for smuggling ordnance to Sri Lanka since the DMK came to power in Tamil Nadu in 2006.

Seven of them belong to the self-styled Tamil culture vigilantes PMK and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi - both allies of the DMK and apologists of the LTTE espousing a left-of-centre political disposition.

Source: newkerala

LTTE unloaded three shiploads of arms in two months: Report

Despite the Sri Lankan Navy’s claim that it had destroyed all 10 arms ships of the Tamil Tiger rebels, the country’s intelligence agencies have revealed that the guerrillas unloaded at least three shiploads of military hardware in the last two months, a media report here said Sunday. It said that intense use of heavy artillery shells by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the northeastern Weli Oya and northern Wanni and Jaffna fronts has “raised fresh concerns” about the LTTE’s ability to replenish their dwindling armoury regularly.

“The general impression among the public was that the LTTE had been starved of military supplies since the navy destroyed a fleet of LTTE vessels which functioned as floating armouries for the group. However, recent reports by intelligence agencies suggest otherwise,” the English weekly Lakbima News said in its defence column Sunday.

“They (intelligence reports) paint a gloomy picture, revealing that the LTTE had unloaded three shiploads of arms during the months of February and March,” it said.

Quoting a recent report “filed by the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) and presented to the National Security Council”, the media report said a shipload of arms was smuggled to the Wanni March 12.

“Another report by the State Intelligence Services (SIS) stated that two vessels had been unloaded by the LTTE during Feb 16-17. These consignments were transferred to trawlers from ships anchored in the deep seas and unloaded in Chalai, Mullaitivu and Veththilaikerny on the northeastern coast,” it said.

According to the media report, the recent developments in the battlefront “appear to substantiate the findings of these two reports” with the significant increase in artillery and mortar attacks by the LTTE being observed during recent battles, including the one that left over 200 combatants killed and nearly 1000 wounded on both sides in Muhamalai in the northern Jaffna Peninsula April 23.

Source: thaindian

43 LTTE militants, seven soldiers killed in gunbattles

At least 43 Tamil Tigers and seven soldiers were killed in running gunbattles between the rebels and the security forces in the embattled northern Sri Lanka, the military said here today.

As many as 10 LTTE rebels were killed and 10 others injured when the army launched a massive offensive yesterday and captured an area of 1.5 sq km in Puliyankulam Mannar, it said.

Six LTTE cadres were killed in Janakapura in North-east Welioya yesterday, the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) said adding two soldiers also lost their lives during the confrontation.

In another clash later in the day, army gunned down seven tiger rebels in North Janakapura in Welioya, it said. Two soldiers were also killed in the gunbattle.

As many as four tiger militants were gunned down in Kokkuthduwai in Welioya yesterday, the defence ministry said.

Separately, the security forces gunned down four rebel fighters in Kiribanwewa while three soldiers lost their life in a confrontation in Adankulam in Welioya yesterday.

At least four tiger militants were shot dead in Adampan area of North-western Mannar yesterday while six rebels and a soldier were killed during a clash in Nadulkandal area in the region.

Separately, the army gunned down two LTTE cadres in Palampiddi area, North of Madhu in Vavuniya yesterday

Source: PTI