Security intelligence authorities are warning that exiled LTTE leaders are re-establishing their violent separatist movement in Canada.
"We don't know how far advanced it is, but their intent is pretty clear — to set up a base-in-exile here for the leadership. Some leadership is already here," a well-placed federal government official told the Ottawa Citizen.
The warning accompanied a report late last week to senior government officials revealing that two Southeast Asian smuggling syndicates are arranging the launch of two more shiploads of Tamil migrants to British Columbia in the coming weeks. The boats are expected to carry as many as 50 former LTTE leaders, according to intelligence estimates.
Canada is home to the largest Tamil diaspora, estimated to number 300,000. The vast majority live peacefully, mostly around Toronto.
Still, that makes Canada one of the few places in the world where "LTTE terrorists and supporters might seek to hide in plain sight, and potentially launch terrorist activities," RCMP Commissioner William Elliott noted in a 2009 speech.
"Remember that in its aspirations for a Sikh homeland, the Babbar Khalsa had no specific grievance with Canada. However, their activists and sympathizers here both conceived and carried out the Air India bombing. The result was the world's worst terrorist attack involving aircraft before the fall of 2001, and the worst mass murder in Canadian history," Elliott said.