TAMIL Tiger terrorist group supporters in Australia were secretly taped praising the use of suicide squads and child soldiers.
One of them also allegedly provided the Sri Lankan terrorist group with enough electronic equipment to help make and remotely explode more than 500 bombs.
A two-year joint Australian Federal Police and Victoria Police investigation was able to positively link an electronic device sent by Melbourne man Aruran Vinayagamoorthy to a claymore mine later used in a Tamil Tiger terrorist attack in Sri Lanka.
Other evidence suggested more bombs were made and detonated using the almost $100,000 worth of electronic components Vinayagamoorthy bought in Australia and sent to Sri Lanka between 2003-05.
Police who raided Sivarahah Yathavan’s Vermont South home in 2005 found a video glorifying the activities of the Black Tigers, which was the LTTE commando unit responsible for suicide bombings, assassinations and suicide missions where the odds of coming back alive were slim.
Yathavan described Black Tiger suicide squad members as “great heroes” who knew they were going out to get killed and “they know that before they go and die”.
Vinayagamoorthy also praised Black Tiger suicide squad members for “dying for their country” and said they “don’t kill any innocents”.
“As for me, I have carried arms. I will do anything. Whatever the movement asks of me, I will do them all,” Vinayagamoorthy was secretly recorded saying.
The maximum sentence for the charges they pleaded guilty to is five years. Those charges, laid under the Charter of the United Nations Act, makes it an offence to provide assets to a UN-proscribed entity, which the LTTE is, and didn’t require the prosecution to prove the LTTE was a terrorist organisation.
All three were originally charged in 2007 with much more serious terrorism offences carrying sentences of 25 years, including that they were members of a terrorist organisation, provided support to a terrorist organisation and made funds available to a terrorist organisation. Read Full Article >>