More on the Tamil Tigers terorrist-supporters from Canada file:
Bribe money in Tamil terror case originated from Montreal, FBI allege
Adrian Humphreys, CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, August 25, 2006TORONTO – Money to bribe a U.S. official – traced during an international anti-terrorism probe aimed at the Tamil Tigers – came from Montreal, the FBI said Thursday.
And two of the men arrested in the bribery case are former Montreal residents, adding more Canadian connections to a widening probe that has seen six other men from Canada arrested on charges of aiding a foreign terrorist organization, including money laundering, smuggling equipment and people, and trying to purchase anti-aircraft missiles, machine-guns and other military equipment.
Tens of thousands of dollars from Montreal were earmarked as a bribe for a U.S. federal agent who was posing as a corrupt immigration officer, pretending to allow Tamils to illegally enter the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation alleged in a sworn criminal complaint filed in a New York court.
The money’s path was tracked as part of a large sting operation mounted by the FBI against alleged operatives of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly called the Tamil Tigers, an organization banned as a terrorist group on both sides of the border.
So far a total of 14 people have been taken into custody in the joint FBI-RCMP probe.
First, three Canadians of Tamil descent were accused in New York City on the weekend of trying to buy military hardware after driving across the Canada-U.S. border to meet with a man they believed was a black-market arms dealer, but who was a federal agent, and a Tamil man, who co-operated with U.S. authorities in their probe.
Three other Canadian residents were arrested this week by the RCMP in Ontario, including an engineering graduate from the University of Waterloo who is accused of arranging student couriers to smuggle equipment into Sri Lanka to further the Tamil Tiger’s cause.
A third set of criminal complaints unsealed in a New York court, against three people arrested in Buffalo as part of the FBI’s probe, now reveal further Canadian links.
Thileepan Patpanathan and his brother, Sujeepan Patpanathan, moved to Buffalo from Montreal about six months ago, said Rodney O. Personius, a Buffalo lawyer who represented one of the men in court.
They lived in Montreal for about three years, he said.
I particularly enjoyed this part of the story though:
Also on Thursday, the Canadian Tamil Congress requested meetings with federal justice officials and the head of the RCMP in a bid to distance itself from the terror-related arrests of six Tamil-Canadians, one of whom used to work for the CTC.
‘‘We are deeply concerned at the allegations and the media publicity aris(ing) from the arrests as (they do) not reflect appropriately on the hard working, law-abiding members of the Tamil-Canadian population,’’ the Tamil community organization said in a letter to RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli.
‘‘The allegations involve (a) few individuals who happen to be Tamil. We stress that nothing more, and nothing less should be derived from that.’‘
David Poopalapillai, a national spokesman for the CTC, confirmed that Sahilal Sabaratnam, 27, one of the Canadians arrested Saturday in Long Island, N.Y., was the CTC’s communications director for ‘‘about a year’’ in 2005.
‘‘He was very inactive during that time,’’ Poopalapillai said.
Poopalapillai said the CTC underwent a ‘‘revamping’’ in April and that most of the group’s former executives were replaced.
But other than that….
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