Canada bans World Tamil Movement

First use of tough anti-terror laws to shut down a front organisation :

CANADA: A Toronto-based non-profit organisation has been outlawed by Canadian Cabinet under the Anti-Terrorism Act, in what may signal an aggressive new approach to combating terrorist financing in Canada.

The decision to add the World Tamil Movement (WTM) to Canada’s list of outlawed terrorist groups marks the first time Ottawa has used the anti-terrorism law to shut down a Canadian community group for ties to terrorists.

Stockwell Day, the Minister of Public Safety, was expected to make the announcement in Toronto at 1 p.m. but financial institutions were officially notified at 9 a.m. by Canada’s banking regulator.

The directive issued by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions advised banks and insurance companies to notify the RCMP or CSIS if they hold any accounts linked to the WTM.

The announcement may mark the end of the road for the WTM, which has operated in Canada since the 1980s.

Earlier this year, the RCMP seized dozens of bank accounts linked to the group’s officers and shut down its Montreal branch office.

The Anti-Terrorism Act, passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, allows the Federal Cabinet to prepare a list of “entitites” whose activities are proscribed by Canadian law due to their involvement in terrorist violence.

Until yesterday’s announcement, there were 40 listed entities, all of them groups directly engaged in violence, such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas. Although the law allows for the listing of front or support groups, the Cabinet had so far refrained from doing so.

Because this is a first, it is unclear what will happen next. The listing makes it illegal to financially support the group. Presumably, the WTM offices in Canada would be forced to close and cease operations. The group could also appeal the ruling.

The WTM has been under close police scrutiny. Headquartered in Scarborough, Ontario, the group is accused by Canadian police and intelligence of being the leading front organisation for the Tigers, a separatist group responsible for scores of terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka.

RCMP national security teams have been conducting a criminal probe of the WTM since 2003, and raided its offices in Toronto and Montreal in April 2006, seizing a truckload of documents and Tigers paraphernalia.

In court, RCMP officers claimed to have found evidence indicating the WTM serves as a Tigers front and has been aggressively fundraising in Canada in close concert with Tiger headquarters in Sri Lanka.

Many Tamil-Canadians support the Tigers, considering them freedom fighters, but other have complained to police about the heavy-handed fundraising tactics of the WTM, which some have likened to extortion, but the group, while it admits it is sympathetic to the Tigers, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Isolated on a small island, the Tigers are heavily dependent on outside sources of financing, which they use in part to purchase the weapons needed to prosecute a civil war that has been reignited by the collapse of a ceasefire agreement and the withdrawal of international monitors.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or the LTTE, have been fighting since 1983 for a separate state for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority but in addition to traditional guerrilla tactics, the group has resorted to such terror tactics as suicide bombings, targeted political assassinations of leading government figures as well as the bombing of buses, trains and commercial buildings.

As home to the world’s largest ethnic Tamil populations, Canada has also become an important offshore base for the rebels, which control several front groups in Toronto that harness political and financial support to finance the ethnic insurgency half-a-world away.

Canada outlawed the Tigers under the Anti-Terrorism Act in 2006 but fundraising and other forms of support have continued. Late last year, thousands of Tamil-Canadians converged at the Markham Fairgrounds north of Toronto to attend funeral services for S.P. Thamilselvan, the second-in-command of the LTTE, who was killed in a Government air strike. Several Toronto-area Liberal MPs also attended and later defended their actions. National Post