French court extends detention of 14 LTTE suspects

FRANCE: The French court has decided to extend the period of detention of all 14 key LTTE suspects who were arrested on April 1, 2007 for a further period four months till the first week of December 2007, when they were produced to the courts in the first week of August.

According to the sources, Asian Tribune learnt that appeals for bail was ruled out, as the charges pressed against the arrested LTTE suspects were serious in nature.

It is also learnt that, the SDAT - - Sous-direction Anti Terroriste, the prime counter terrorism agency in France is in the process of framing charges against the suspects and according to the French law, if convicted, they could be sentenced for a maximum period of 10 years in jail.

Subsequent to repeated attempts to secure the bail for the arrested carders failed, now according to sources in Paris, LTTE have resorted to organize various propaganda campaigns in order to influence the French authorities, portraying that the arrested carders are not members of LTTE and they were only engaged in promoting welfare and well-being of Tamils in North and East areas of Sri Lanka.

Accordingly, certain local pro-LTTE activists who have taken over the task of revamping the LTTE network in France, following the April 1 arrest, are presently engaged in organizing a protest rally in coordination with LTTE front organisations in Europe. This protest demonstration is scheduled to be held in Paris in the early part of September.

However, it is unlikely that these actions would have any impact on the release of the arrested LTTE suspects since the true nature of LTTE has been already exposed and their activities in Europe have become a serious concern to the local authorities.

Asian Tribune