One-third of illegal migrants aboard Ocean Lady are LTTE - Vancouver Sun

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One-third of illegal migrants aboard Ocean Lady are LTTE - Vancouver Sun
At least 25 of the 76 men who arrived in British Columbia aboard the Ocean Lady migrant ship last October were members of the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group outlawed in Canada, according to an internal government report.
The Canada Border Services Agency report, marked "secret," raises the possibility the ship's entire journey to Canada might have been financed and organized by the terrorist group to help settle surviving militants abroad following its crushing military defeat by the Sri Lankan government last year, The Vancouver Sun reports.
"Movement of a large number of high-value combatants and intelligence officers aboard Ocean Lady may be part of an effort by surviving members of the group to reconstitute from a base of operations overseas in order to renew resistance to . . . Sri Lanka," said the report, obtained by the Vancouver Sun through the Access to Information Act.
The Ocean Lady - a name spray-painted on a ship registered as the Easwary - arrived in B.C. on Oct. 16. All 76 people aboard claimed refugee status.
News reports at the time suggested at least one or two of the migrants aboard might have been members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. But the border report said that the former militants, most of them middle-ranked fighters, could use Canada as a major base of operations in the future.
"If these men chose to work in unison they could easily form a formidable LTTE presence in Canada," it said. "If the overseas wing's intention is to regroup what is left of its Sri Lanka-based operation in Canada . . . these men clearly have the requisite abilities and experience required to move that process along," Vancouver Sun reports.
Border guards suspected the ship once formed part of the Tamil Tiger's merchant marine unit and had probably been used to smuggle narcotics and weapons.
"This may explain why a number of the migrants' clothes tested positive for such substances as heroin and cocaine," the Canadian government report said.
The report also said the Tamil Tigers are known for providing a kind of welfare system for its fighters, providing them with post-combat benefits to help secure their loyalty.
"Free passage to a refugee receiving country is exactly the kind of material benefit the group extended to its fighters in return for unquestioning loyalty to the movement," the report said.
Officials from the Canada Border Services Agency refused to comment on the report, Vancouver Sun further reports.
Courtesy: Policy Research & Information Unit of the Presidential Secretariat of Sri Lanka