Counterterrorism police in Quebec and Ontario effectively shut down a non-profit organization for Canadian Tamils this weekend due to allegations it has been raising money to finance terrorist activities in Sri Lanka.
The RCMP was expected to announce details of its unprecedented actions as early as today, but several sources said police had moved in to enforce a Federal Court restraining order against the World Tamil Movement.
The WTM's offices in Montreal and Toronto have been under police investigation for six years, and were raided by police in 2006. While no charges have yet resulted, the decision to seek a restraining order suggests Ottawa is aggressively pursuing the group.
The restraining order pertains to real estate in Montreal and other assets in Toronto.
The recent events are focused mostly on Montreal. Police sealed off the Montreal WTM office on Friday, said Steven Slimovitch, the group's lawyer. He said his clients were barred from entering the premises, disrupting community programs.
"A Federal Court judge has issued an order to seal the office of the World Tamil Movement and to essentially put it under the trusteeship of the federal government," he said.
The order was issued under a section of the Criminal Code dealing with terrorism financing, but Mr. Slimovitch said no defence counsel were present for the hearing and his clients deny the allegations they are financing terrorists.
"My clients have never been charged with terrorism-financing, and my clients have never had a chance to defend themselves against terrorism-financing accusations," he said.
The action is the latest development in two related RCMP-led investigations called Project Osaluki and Project Crible. The probes, by the Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams in Ontario and Quebec, are examining allegations the WTM has been funnelling money to the Tamil Tigers to finance civil war in Sri Lanka.
The Tamil Tigers are an outlawed terrorist group in Canada. Knowingly raising money for the group or financing its activities is against the law and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Many members of Canada's large ethnic Tamil community support the Tigers and their fight to create an independent state for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority.
Police went to court last week to ask for restraining orders against WTM properties in Toronto and Montreal, said a source familiar with the case. Officers were in the process late yesterday of serving official notice to the people associated with the properties.
Police officers were having difficulty finding at least one per-son linked to the group and its properties. The RCMP was apparently waiting for that to take place before publicly announcing the moves it had taken.
This appears to be a first in the realm of terrorism, but the police action is similar to the way police routinely deal with organized crime: Officers will appear before a judge in private and present affidavits seeking judicial approval to restrain properties considered proceeds of crime.
While the property is restrained, the owner cannot sell it, move it, alter it or dispose of it. The order secures the property pending a court hearing. The owners are then notified and can appear before the courts and mount a defence against the Crown's allegations.
A judge will then decide whether the restrained property should be forfeited to the Crown or returned to its owner. The process is similar to how police restrain fortified clubhouses of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club and other bike gangs.
The weekend police action in Montreal has disrupted community activities scheduled for the group's headquarters in the city's Cote-des-Neiges district, Mr. Slimovitch said.
"Essentially they're shutting down the entire community -- artistic things, sporting things," he said. "My clients completely deny any terrorism financing. They support the Tamil people and they support the Tamil people's right to self-determination, but they are very much against any form of terrorism."
An official with the WTM Montreal office declined comment and referred all questions to Mr. Slimovitch. The lawyer said he intends to go to court to have the reasons for the order disclosed.
Corporal Elaine Lavergne of the RCMP said the police force could not comment as a result of the secrecy order.
"We are under the authority of a court," she said. She could not even disclose the level of court that issued the order, which she said is sealed from public view. "It has never happened before," she said of the sweeping secrecy provisions.
The president of the WTM's Ontario branch, Sitta Sittampalam, also declined to comment yesterday. "I was asked by my lawyer not to reveal anything on this matter," he said. "I'm not in a position to divulge anything."
(National Post)
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Terror funding probe revolves around conflict between Singhalese, Tamils
Canada's biggest terrorism financing investigation revolves around a beautiful island with a tragic history. Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) gained independence from Britain in 1948 but fell almost immediately into ethnic conflict. The Singhalese majority imposed harsh restrictions on the ethnic Tamil minority, suppressing the Tamil language and limiting Tamil enrolment in universities and the civil service. Ethnic rioting and civil war followed, fought primarily between ruthless separatist guerrillas, the Tamil Tigers, and the government. The Tamil Tigers resorted to terrorism and pioneered the now-familiar tactic of sending suicide bombers into crowds wearing explosive vests. For their part, government forces have been accused of widespread war crimes against Tamils.
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Tamil movement held to account
Police probe alleged collection of 'war taxes'
The World Tamil Movement headquarters is a red brick industrial building on a strip of auto body and garment shops a block from Highway 401.
A Canadian flag waves above the front door.
Inside, a giant portrait of a Tamil guerrilla leader fills a wall above a stack of Tamil newspapers reporting the latest skirmishes in the jungles of Sri Lanka.
Down the hall in the library, Tamil books are stacked neatly on shelves. But otherwise the building is empty and dark, its contents in the hands of RCMP officers.
"We are functioning but our actions are limited," says Dave Thevarajan, 67, a retired civil engineer who volunteers at the WTM office. "We are trying to do our best but most of the rooms are closed because of the suspicions."
Those suspicions revolve around money: The RCMP accuses the World Tamil Movement of collecting "war taxes" from Canada's large ethnic Tamil community and funnelling the cash to the Tamil Tigers guerrillas in Sri Lanka.
In 2006, police backed a three-tonne GMC 6500 gentle-ride cargo van into the WTM parking lot in Scarborough, armed with a search warrant alleging the innocuous-looking building was a front for terrorist fundraising.
For three days, police tagged and seized more than 1,000 items, and then loaded them into the truck, leased for the occasion from U-Haul. Flags, T-shirts, golf shirts, ball caps, desk clocks, mugs, key chains and bumper stickers -- all bearing the militaristic Tamil Tigers emblem -- were hauled away.
But it was financial records police were after, and they found them too: pledge forms, receipts, ledger books and lists of contributors. "Significant evidence of terrorist financing was found," RCMP Corporal Satish Tarachandra wrote in a court affidavit.
Two years later, however, the investigation is still underway. So is a related probe in Montreal, Project Crible, which is examining alleged links between the Quebec chapter of the WTM and the Tamil Tigers (also known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE).
Police were under pressure to act because a judge had given them only until April 12 to hang on to the evidence seized in Montreal and until April 22 to keep the materials taken from the WTM office in Toronto.
Though the RCMP would not comment yesterday, sources said officers moved in during the weekend to enforce a federal order that places restraints on WTM property.
"We are waiting," says Sitta Sittampalam, the president of the WTM Ontario branch, said in an interview before the weekend's developments. "Probably they have a lot of materials taken from the office…. Probably they might need translation, a lot of them may be in the Tamil language. That may be the cause."
Parliament outlawed fundraising for terrorism in 2001. Since then, only one person has been charged. Prapa Thambithurai was arrested in British Columbia on March 14 for allegedly collecting money for the Tamil Tigers. He was active in the Vancouver chapter of the WTM, which is how he came to the attention of counterterrorism investigators in British Columbia.
Other than that, the terror financing law has spawned several investigations but no charges. A look at Project Osaluki may hint at why: language barriers, logistical problems and the challenge of tracing the global flow of money from Canada to the hands of terrorists.
RCMP spokesman Corporal Marc LaPorte says he could not comment because the investigation was ongoing, but details of the case are described in hundreds of pages of documents filed in Ontario and Quebec courts during the past two years.
Sergeant John MacDonald, the lead investigator and a member of the RCMP-led Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, described the probe in an affidavit as "complex, extremely time-consuming and cumbersome."
The difficulties began as soon as police began their search. The RCMP did not have an evidence vault big enough to store the hundreds of boxes taken from the WTM. Nor could any nearby police detachment accommodate the investigators and their U-Haul of materials.
Police had to take everything to a covert RCMP Emergency Response Team base while the sergeant looked for a long-term work site. It took three weeks to find commercial office space -- and then all the exhibits had to be loaded into a tractor-trailer and taken to the new location.
Between six and 10 officers sifted through the evidence, as well as a translator, since almost all the materials were in the Tamil language, which uses a script called vatteluttu and has 12 vowels and 18 consonants.
A forensic accountant analyzed hundreds of financial documents. Then officers had to chase leads. "These are time-consuming activities necessitating a slow methodical approach," the sergeant writes.
In the view of Mr. Thevarajan, investigators are wasting their time looking for something that isn't there. "The RCMP and CSIS were trying to bring a link between us and the LTTE, but we are not LTTE," he says.
The World Tamil Movement was founded in the 1980s by expatriates in Toronto who had fled Sri Lanka but remained eager to further the cause of Tamil independence. Allegations soon surfaced that the WTM was effectively an arm of the Tigers.
The police investigation into the WTM began in Ontario on July 9, 2002. But it was not until four years later, when the federal Conservatives added the Tigers to Canada's list of proscribed terrorist groups, that things heated up.
Two days after the announcement by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, a police surveillance team spotted a suspect removing boxes from the WTM building in Montreal. Fearing evidence was being destroyed, police moved in to conduct a search.
In Toronto, surveillance teams also thought they saw materials being relocated from the WTM office to a grocery store called Ambal Trading and the Tamil Academy of Arts and Technology. All three addresses were searched beginning on April 21, 2006.
Police say they seized: - Lists of Tamil Canadians and the amounts they had donated, as well as pre-authorized bank payment forms; - Lists of businesses that had made donations in multiples of $10,000; - Plastic collection jars with the WTM and Tamil Tigers logos side by side; - Computer disks that police said suggests money flows from Montreal to Toronto, then to other countries.
"The World Tamil Movement acts as the de facto taxation arm of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and … utilizes collectors to collect funds from Canadian Tamils on an organized and systematic basis," Sgt. MacDonald wrote.
Police also found a manual on missile design, tributes to Tamil Tigers "martyrs," "large numbers of documents pertaining to LTTE cadres, operatives and activities" and photos suggesting the WTM encourages Tamil Canadian children to "develop a cult-like devotion and obedience" to the leader of the Tamil Tigers, he wrote.
The lengthy list of seized items, obtained by the National Post, suggests a reverence for the Tamil Tigers and its leader but whether it translates into a criminal case remains unproven, and the law itself is still untested. It is also unclear whether the investigation has made a dent in Tamil Tigers fundraising efforts in Canada.
Last Monday, Conservative MP Art Hanger tabled a petition in the House of Commons signed by more than 1,000 Canadians of Sri Lankan origin. It urged the government to "ensure adequate surveillance and prosecution of the LTTE's front organizations and bogus charities."
Volunteers at the Toronto WTM headquarters say their numbers have dwindled since the police raid. Some don't want to be associated with the group while it is under police scrutiny, but Mr. Sittampalam says there is nothing to do but wait. "We would like to have our things back," he says. "Anyway we'll wait for the deadline, that's the best we can do now."
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