Eight persons were charged in federal court in New York yesterday with conspiracy to provide material support and resources to a designated terrorist organization, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the FBI said.
Two complaints unsealed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn said four men were arrested on Long Island on Saturday after three of them traveled to New York from Canada to attempt to purchase from an undercover FBI agent Russian-made SA-18 surface-to-air missiles, missile launchers, AK-47s and other weapons.
The complaint said that the weapons were to be used by the LTTE in a “rapidly escalating conflict against the Sri Lankan military” and that the men were acting at the direction of senior LTTE leadership in Sri Lanka.
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A separate complaint said they sought to obtain classified information, conspired to bribe U.S. public officials to remove the LTTE from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations and dealt in illegal financial transactions with LTTE.
The suspects were identified as being “closely connected” with LTTE leadership in Sri Lanka, and many of them have met with LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and other senior leaders of the terrorist group.
The complaints said the suspects agreed to an initial shipment of 10 SA-18 surface-to-air missiles and 500 AK-47s, and discussed a total price of between $900,000 and $937,500 for the equipment and training.
“Today’s arrests of high-level Tamil Tiger financiers and operatives are a clear example of the FBI’s ability to combine long-term, complex intelligence gathering, terrorism prevention and law enforcement,” said Leslie G. Wiser Jr., the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark, N.J., office.
LTTE was founded in 1976 and raises money, acquires weapons and technology, publicizes its cause of establishing an independent Tamil state in northern Sri Lanka and utilizes a guerrilla strategy that often includes acts of terrorism.
With an army of several thousand combatants, the LTTE controls most of the northern and eastern coastal areas of Sri Lanka. The complaints said that in the past 15 years, the LTTE has killed hundreds and carried out numerous political assassinations. Since April, more than 1,700 people have been killed in the escalating conflict.
In 1997, the LTTE was designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization.
Named in the complaint were Murugesu Vinayagamoorthy, a senior LTTE supporter, and Nachimuthu Socrates, a LTTE supporter in North America. They are accused, with others, of conspiring to bribe State Department officials to remove the LTTE from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said efforts also were made to acquire heavy military artillery and missiles.
On Friday, Mr. Kolko said, Sahilal Sabaratnam, identified in the complaint as the “financial guy,” and Thiruthanikan Thanigasalam traveled to the United States by car from Canada and met with two undercover agents. Asked what they needed, the complaint said, the suspects sought missiles to shoot down Israeli-made fighter jets and weaponry “to destroy boats.”
At that meeting, which was recorded, the suspects discussed using bank accounts in Switzerland, St. Croix or other offshore locations to finance the purchase. The complaint said that they wanted the delivery to be made ship-to-ship in the Indian Ocean.
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