COLOMBO: Prof Rohan Gunaratna, an internationally acclaimed Sri Lankan expert on terrorism, wants Lankan courts to be given extra-territorial jurisdic

'Lankan courts should go after LTTE abroad’

COLOMBO: Prof Rohan Gunaratna, an internationally acclaimed Sri Lankan expert on terrorism, wants Lankan courts to be given extra-territorial jurisdiction to go after and punish LTTE operatives in other countries.
Gunaratna, who heads the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, said here on Monday that though the LTTE’s military machine in Sri Lanka was destroyed in May 2009, the separatist group continued to be very active abroad, indulging in political and criminal activities.
After the military defeat of the LTTE, the “criminal” wing in charge of arms smuggling and international finance, operating under Castro and Norway-based Nediyavan, had got involved in credit card frauds and human smuggling, he said.
“But it is also itching to carry out terrorist strikes in Sri Lanka,” Gunaratna asserted. According to him, sympathisers of this group had been detected in Tamil Nadu too.
Some key members of the criminal group are Ponnaiah Anandarajah, who secured massive amounts of arms from China and North Korea with false end-user certificates, UK-based Shanmugasundaram Kanthaskaran, Canada-based Ravishankar Kanakaraj, and former Sea Tigers Capt Kamalraj Kandswamy and Capt Vinod.
Gunaratna described the US-based LTTE group led by V Rudrakumaran and the UK-based one led by Fr S J Immanuel as politico-ideological groups overtly engaged in lobbying with western governments against the Lankan government, but covertly working for the LTTE’s separatist cause.
But these two “peaceful” groups could, at an appropriate time, collaborate with Nediyavan to restart violence in Sri Lanka, the expert warned.
LTTE groups overseas would have to be kept in check by continuous intelligence gathering, by politically engaging the Tamil diaspora and foreign governments and by acquiring new legal instruments, he said.
He pointed out that Lankan courts had no jurisdiction over persons indulging in anti-Lankan criminal and terrorist activities overseas. Colombo should amend the criminal law to empower the courts to take cognisance of these crimes, apprehend and punish them, he said.
He warned of the possibility of western countries lifting the ban on the LTTE, accepting the Tamil groups’ propaganda that they were not violent but purely political. Lanka should, without letup, fully utilise the anti-terrorist orientation of the West post-9/11, he said.