LEADER OF THE LTTE in the United States and one of the LTTE's senior arms procurement agents were among four suspects who pleaded guilty in a US court on Tuesday for conspiring to provide material support to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Those who pleaded guilty were Karunakaran Kandasamy, Pratheepan Thavaraja, Murugesu Vinayagamoorthy, and Vijayshanthar Patpanathan.
The guilty plea proceedings were held before Chief United States District Judge Raymond J. Dearie. Kandasamy and Pratheepan face a 20-year maximum statutory sentence. Vinayagamoorthy and Patpanathan face a 15-year maximum statutory sentence.
The LTTE relies on sympathetic Tamil expatriates residing in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, and several other countries to raise and launder money and smuggle arms, explosives, equipment, and technology into LTTE-controlled territory. To coordinate these activities, the LTTE established ‘branches’ in at least 12 countries, including the United States. Kandasamy was the director of the American branch of the LTTE, which operated through charitable front organizations, including the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO). As the director of the American branch, Kandasamy oversaw and directed the LTTE's various activities in the United States, including raising millions of dollars for the LTTE and laundering it through the TRO. Vijayshanthar Patpanathan assisted Kandasamy and others in these fundraising and money laundering activities.
Pratheepan Thavaraja was a senior procurement agent for the LTTE, involved in the purchase of improvised explosive devices, missiles, machine guns, artillery, radar, and other equipment and technology from countries around the world, including the United States. A single spreadsheet of ‘priority’ items to purchase, which was found in Pratheepan's laptop computer, totaled $20 million in arms and equipment. It included, among other things, six 25mm anti-aircraft guns at $160,000 each, six 30 mm twin-barrel mounted naval guns type 69 (with base) at $30,000 each, thousands of automatic rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, grenade launchers, 50 tons of C4 explosive, five tons of phlegmatized RDX explosive, 50 tons of TNT based on Chinese specification and 50 tons of tritonal explosive. Pratheepan and Murugesu Vinayagamoorthy were also involved in the attempted bribery of purported U.S. State Department officials to remove the LTTE from the list of designated foreign terrorist organizations. In addition, Vinayagamoorthy participated in laundering LTTE money through a Swiss bank account to covertly fund a U.S. Congressman's trip to LTTE-controlled territory in Sri Lanka.
"Just weeks after the LTTE's leaders in Sri Lanka were defeated in that country, the leader of the LTTE in the United States and other LTTE supporters have been brought to justice," said U.S. Attorney Campbell.
"The defendants were convicted for their involvement in efforts to raise millions of dollars and acquire arms and technology for use by the LTTE," he said.
Mr. Campbell added that this successful prosecution is the result of a coordinated international effort by law enforcement led by the Newark and New York Divisions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Joint Terrorism Task Force, with assistance provided by more than 20 of the FBI's Field Offices, including New Haven, Buffalo, Seattle, Baltimore, Chicago, and San Jose; the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the U.S. Department of State; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police National Security Program; and British and Indonesian law enforcement authorities.
The government's LTTE cases are being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jeffrey H. Knox, Andrew E. Goldsmith, Greg D. Andres and Marshall L. Miller.- PRNewswire
(Courtesy: Daily Mirror)
