Trial upholds Lankan view :
Terrorists still raise funds overseas:
Dutch Court jails five Tiger activists
by Manjula FERNANDO
A
Dutch court sentenced the five LTTE activists accused of raising Euro
130 million for the group to serve between two to six years in prison in
a verdict delivered on Friday. Dutch police arrested all five men in
June 2010 after an investigation into the Tiger organisation.
Despite the ruling that upheld the prosecution charges the court did
not recognise the LTTE as a terrorist organisation instead described it
as a banned organisation and the conflict in Sri Lanka a
“non-international armed conflict,” foreign media reported.
This was in contrast to the EU’s policy which regards the LTTE as a
proscribed terror outfit since 2006. The defence attorney for two of the
convicts, Victor Koppe who also appears for a case filed by the LTTE in
the EU Court of Justice said he would appeal the verdict. “The trial
supported a long-held view by the Sri Lankan government that LTTE front
organizations continued to operate among the 800,000 Tamils in the
diaspora, many of them in wealthy countries in Europe, Canada and
Australia,” media reports said. The case banked on a USB stick that
contained the LTTE’s 2010 financial plan, seized from one of the
convicts, Selliah, whom the court described as “an unmissable link” in
the LTTE.
The verdict read ‘without Selliah’s work many millions of Euros would
not have gone to an outlawed organisation’.
The other men had worked for front organisations that raised money in
the Netherlands.
The Court said fundraisers used threats to wrest money from the Tamil
community in the Netherlands. That continued even after the military
crushed the Tigers and killed their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in May
2009. Groups of fundraisers would repeatedly visit the homes of Tamils
and threaten that they would not be allowed to visit their relatives in
Sri Lanka if they did not pay up.
International counter terrorism expert Prof.Rohan Gunaratna told the
Sunday Observer yesterday via email, “every peace loving Sri Lankan
should be grateful to the Dutch government for arresting, charging,
prosecuting and sentencing a cell engaged in illegal weapons procurement
from North Korea and unleashing violence on Sri Lankan soil.” He said
the LTTE operated a branch in Netherlands that raised millions of
dollars to procure arms, ammunition and explosives that killed, maimed
and injured not only Armed Forces and law enforcement personnel but also
civilians.
Sana Chandran aka Selliah, the LTTE international accountant and
auditor who was sentenced on Friday provided the funds to purchase
several tonnes of weaponry from North Korea from 1997-2009. A close
associate of Prabhakaran, according to Prof.Gunaratna, he lived and
operated in Holland. The court verdict clearly demonstrated that the
LTTE was engaged in support activities that violated Dutch and
international laws. The LTTE engaged in political assassination of world
leaders, bombing public buildings in the capital of Sri Lanka, attacking
civil aviation and maritime shipping, massacring civilians - in this
light, Prof.Gunaratna said, it may be argued that Dutch court exceeded
its mandate in relations to the case by making a political statement
about a domestic conflict in a foreign country. |