Thwarting LTTE's designs in Europe

Growing terrorist propaganda network:

Text of the speech by Sri Lanka's Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the EU Ravinatha Aryasinha, at the European Corporate Security Association (ECSA), Brussels on March 23, 2011

First part of this article was published yesterday:

b) Special skills possessed by LTTE could be on hire

Ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha

There continues to remain hidden within the largely respectable Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora community numbering anything from 1.5-2 million spread across four continents, some seriously dangerous individuals, who have been part of the LTTE terrorist network and posses very special skills. They constitute a ready army of 'mercenaries for hire' with a wide spectrum of skills that can be obtained for a price and in this day and age of self inspired terrorism, there are many including the numerous single issue terrorist groups looking for such skills, especially in Europe.

What are some of these skills;

i. Arms procurement and smuggling

The capacity of the LTTE in navigating the arms bazaars of the world is well known. Tracing of the path of the explosives and devices that were used in the January 1996 Central Bank bomb explosion which killed just under 100 persons and injured over 1400, shows money raised from contributions of the Tamil Canadian Diaspora, laundered through accounts held by a Canadian of Sri Lankan origin, with an advance paid through Europe for 10 tons of RDX and 50 tons of TNT imported from Ukraine, shipped through the Black sea port of Nicolaev, and final payment made through bank accounts in Singapore.

A number of LTTE operatives have already been convicted by the US and the UK for seeking to purchase high powered weaponry including SAM missiles and AK-47s for the LTTE, which is indicative of the network and brazenness with which the group operates.

This network of arms procurers with close links to the underground arms bazaars which works in the classic terrorist cell mode has always operated from outside the country and continues its operations.

ii. Passport fraud and human trafficking

Besides blatant abuse of your liberal asylum regimes - where many Sri Lankans who apply for asylum regularly spend their holidays in Sri Lanka - the criminal activities involved in passport fraud and human smuggling carried out by the LTTE complicates the demographics in your countries. While Australia constantly comes under pressure in this respect, last year Canada was at the receiving end of two shiploads of asylum seekers, the last involving the 'MV Sun Sea' which brought 492 would be refugees to Canada, many suspected to be LTTE cadre. 33 of them have been deemed inadmissible, and following hearings held so far, several have been ordered to be deported having admitted to being an LTTE cadre.

iii. Skimming, extortion and money laundering

Apart from abusing the generosity of your societies, acts of the LTTE and its connected groups encourages criminality and pose serious ramifications to the security of corporate financial activity. The most well-known is of course the skimming of credit cards at many petrol stations owned by LTTE in the West through its operatives, and the money extracted from locations in the East. The group is also well-known for extortion, facilitated through a registration process of Tamil families by systematically assigning a unique PIN number for each family and individual in total violation of your privacy laws, for illegal taxation and monitoring of their movements into Sri Lanka. Its 'hawala' style transactions, prevents these money transactions being detected within the FATF stipulations, including the 'know your customer' requirements operationalized by the private sector to detect suspicious transactions.

No single event has brought out more conclusively the scale of the money laundering operations carried out by the LTTE as in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami that struck Sri Lanka on December 26, 2004. According to the Financial Intelligence Unit of Sri Lanka (FIU), 61 percent of the capital expenditure claimed to have been transferred and spent by the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) on projects in Sri Lanka from funds collected in the West in the aftermath of the tsunami, cannot be physically verified. It is noteworthy that it is was largely the laundering of tsunami funds that led to the proscription of the TRO by the US Treasury Department in 2007, as well as the freezing of assets of TRO-Denmark in 2008.

iv. Threat to corporate interests

The LTTE has on several occasions sought to cripple the Sri Lankan economy, from endangering the lives of tourists, threatening business establishments to bringing production to a halt.

The US State Department's 'Patterns of Global Terrorism 1994' was to report that "in April 1994 the Ellalan Force, an LTTE front group, claimed credit for bombing several major tourist hotels in Colombo. The blasts, which caused only minor damage and two injuries, probably were intended to damage Sri Lanka's tourism industry rather than to harm Westerners.

The Ellalan Force also claimed in August to have poisoned tea - Sri Lanka's primary export - with arsenic, although none was ever found. Threatening Sri Lanka's two leading economic activities demonstrates the Tigers' interest in economic terrorism".

The LTTE and its fronts have also shown to be adapt at mounting politically motivated 'Boycott Sri Lanka campaigns" targeting international companies doing business with Sri Lanka, as well as customers of products manufactured in Sri Lanka such as Victoria's Secrets and GAP. While such efforts have not had any tangible effect on sales in the past, and are unlikely to even more today when international business is eager to get a foothold in Sri Lanka, the skills and tactics adopted by these LTTE fronted protest groups, will continue to be of considerable interest to law enforcement systems around the world. Also at its height the LTTE boasted of a shipping fleet of approx 25 vessels registered under numerous flags, which alongside traditional trading activity, was used for transportation of arms and ammunition in the pretext of tankers/cargo delivery/fishing. Further its dreaded 'Sea Tigers', who besides its battle role against the Sri Lankan forces, was well-known for engaging in piracy in the Indian Ocean hijacking over 10 vessels and also killing some of its crew members. They continue to have the skills to make shipping in the Indian Ocean more vulnerable, as presently seen in the Malacca Straits and the Horn of Africa.

v. Propaganda broadcasts and cyber terror

For many years the LTTE illegally used an INTELSAT transponder for propaganda radio and the group is well known for its propaganda operations. Additionally long before wikileaks.org discovered the safety of distributed content to protect and continue operations, the LTTE did the same, mushrooming websites from the 1980s onwards, becoming among the first, to use the internet for purposes of terrorism - both in terms of propaganda and for conveying operational information. The LTTE group 'Internet Black Tigers', in August 1997 claimed responsibility for 'suicide e-mail bombings' aimed at disrupting the electronic information network/communications systems used by Sri Lanka's Missions abroad. The Patterns of Global Terrorism Report 1997 identified the LTTE as being responsible for this brazen act of 'information warfare' which paralysed the communication systems of most of Sri Lanka's overseas missions.

vi. Radicalization and indoctrination of youth

An estimated 20,000 Tamil students between the ages of four and 21 years study in more than 300 'Tamil Cholai' (language) schools functioning in Europe under different names, which receives host government funding, but in actuality are directly or indirectly administered by the LTTE and generates their own funds. In addition, students of these schools are forced to participate in propaganda events organized by the LTTE and its front organizations, and have been used in violent attacks carried out on Sri Lanka Embassies including in Europe in Berlin, the Hague, London, Oslo and Paris.

In the Oslo attack of April 2009, five were minors below the age of 18, showing the extent to which the LTTE had brainwashed the second and third generation Tamil youth, who had probably never visited Sri Lanka or had any understanding of the issues in question. What was further disturbing about these demonstrations was that they were demanding a ceasefire which would have bailed out the LTTE, while there was no mention about the nearly 300,000 civilians who were being held as 'human shields' at the time by the LTTE.

c) LTTE's assets, personnel and activity in Europe

As it did in India in the 1980s and in Canada in the 1990s, Europe has today become the preferred location for concentration of LTTE assets, personnel and activity. This was evident in the radicalized activism shown by pro-LTTE formations in the streets of European capitals - Berlin, Brussels, Geneva, the Hague, London, Oslo, Paris etc. during the last phase of Sri Lanka's struggle to militarily defeat the LTTE, as it has been over the past two years when efforts have continued to discredit Sri Lanka, in order to keep the pot boiling and justify continuing refugee status for a bulk of the Sri Lanka Tamil Diaspora, who otherwise would be forced to go back home. The crude calculation appears to be, that conscious of the relevance of the community as a vote block, the political establishment in these countries will be relatively soft in meeting the challenge posed by pro-LTTE groups.

While this has worked to a degree at least in terms of the political rhetoric, it is clear that the law and order and criminal justice systems in these countries however have not been fooled.

It does seem ironic, that since the LTTE leadership was militarily defeated on the banks of Nandikadal in Northern Sri Lanka on May 19, 2009, while in Sri Lanka there has been no cause for any counter terrorism action since that time, that in counter-terror operations in Europe some 32 LTTE activists have been arrested, while an additional 21 have been convicted.

In France, in November 2009, 21 LTTE activists were sentenced for upto seven years for financing of terrorism, and the CCTF, the Tamil Coordinating Committee (TCC) branch in France, the LTTE front organization which most of those convicted belonged to (the others being from the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization - TRO), was banned.

To be continued