Prapaharan Arrested in Toronto

Prapaharan (aka 'Prapa') Thambithurai is scheduled to appear in Vancouver Provincial Court tomorrow on charges of collecting money for the LTTE
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(March 18, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) For the first time in Canadian history, a man has been charged with terrorist financing for allegedly raising money for the Tamil Tigers, police said Monday, according to the Media report in Toronto.

"The funds were allegedly raised for the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam], which is a listed terrorist organization in Canada," said RCMP Supt. Lloyde Plante of B.C.'s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET).
"This is the first charge of this nature in Canada."

Prapaharan (Prapa) Thambithurai, 45, who lives in Toronto but was arrested on the weekend in Metro Vancouver, is charged with providing or making available property or services for terrorist purposes.

Asked to elaborate on the charge, Plante said: "He was soliciting funding that was to be utilized to support the LTTE, that was the allegation."

The LTTE is commonly known as the Tamil Tigers, which are fighting a bloody independence campaign in Sri Lanka. The LTTE was added to the list of banned terrorist organizations in Canada in April 2006.

Police allege the funds were being collected from members of the Sri Lankan community in Metro Vancouver, which is 6,000 to 8,000 people strong.

Plante referred to the people who made the donations as the "victims" in the case, but wouldn't comment when asked if they knew the money was going to support the LTTE.

The RCMP is asking anyone who has had contact with Thambithurai to phone police.

The police investigation continues, but Plante wouldn't say whether more suspects are being targeted locally or elsewhere in Canada.

Plante, who is with INSET's Anti-Terrorist Financial Investigation Unit, said he could not elaborate further about the case because the charge is now before the courts.

Thambithurai was remanded in custody after his arrest. He will make his first court appearance Tuesday in Vancouver Provincial Court.

Plante wouldn't say how much money was raised or where it was sent.

Thambithurai, who is a Canadian citizen, travelled to Vancouver to conduct his alleged activities but Plante refused to reveal over what period of time the suspect was here.

He may have been here as long ago as August 1996, because a man claiming to live in Vancouver who had the same name as Thambithurai wrote a scathing letter to Maclean's magazine then.

The letter said the RCMP and CSIS had "recruited some shady characters living in the murky field of intelligence gathering and crime" who were "painting a picture of Sri Lankans living in this country as guerrillas engaging in criminal activities."

Parameswary Pararajasingham, secretary last year for the Tamil Cultural Society of B.C. and principal of the Vancouver Tamil School, said Monday she had never heard of the man arrested by police.

Plante said the charges announced Monday were "not specifically" related to a police raid in 2005 at the Vancouver office of the World Tamil Movement (WTM), a group the RCMP alleges is a financing the LTTE.

Last September, The Vancouver Sun reported there were three investigations across Canada - in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal - to determine whether the terrorist Tamil Tigers had been illegally raising funds here to help their bloody independence campaign.

The 2005 search warrant allowed police in Vancouver to search the WTM for "invoices, bills and receipts, donation records, any correspondence relating to fundraising, disbursement and direction provided to anyone involved in the organization."

At the time of the raid, INSET received intelligence that the WTM was allegedly selling propaganda to finance the Tigers. The office, located at 4592-A Fraser Street in Vancouver, opened in September 2004.

Seven suspects were named in the information to obtain a search warrant, which alleged the WTM misappropriated $75,000 in tsunami relief donations to the rebel cause.

(Thambithurai was not one of the seven listed in the search warrant, and Plante said there is no indication phoney tsunami relief donations are part of the most recent allegations.)

"Front organizations were established for the purpose of raising funds, coordinating community activities and administering the funds that would later be forwarded to the LTTE," the warrant information says. "In Canada, the WTM is an LTTE front organization."

The search warrant said: "Members of the WTM sell merchandise such as books, compact discs, flags, clothing, newspapers, pamphlets and videos to raise funds. They are sold at community events as well as selected business locations. The proceeds are then funnelled back to the LTTE."

In Toronto, police seized computer discs when they raided the WTM office in April 2006, which showed the movement of money from Canada to bank accounts in Sri Lanka.

The National Post reported in 2006 that the WTM acknowledged it supports the independence aspirations of the Tigers, but says any donations it collects are used solely for Tamil refugees, orphans and other humanitarian needs.

The search warrant executed in Vancouver three years ago indicated an RCMP officer said he interviewed four WTM leaders and met a dozen times with a confidential informant who provided information about "the LTTE's illegal smuggling of Tamils to Canada for financial gain."

- Sri Lanka Guardian