Charity financing terrorism: Sri Lanka; Tamil group has office in Toronto

Charity financing terrorism: Sri Lanka
Tamil group has office in Toronto

http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=974701

Stewart Bell, National Post
Published: Thursday, November 20, 2008

War and Conflict

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Raj Gunanathan

TORONTO - Liberty Square Shopping Plaza has a South Asian convenience store and a branch of the Toronto Public Library, but the tenant that has brought this busy strip mall international notoriety is upstairs above a jewellery store.

The Tamils Rehabilitation Organization works out of a cramped second-floor office with a big Canadian flag over the window. And while its official mission is humanitarian, governments in three countries suspect it serves a shadier purpose.

RCMP counterterrorism investigators and Canada Revenue Agency charity regulators accuse the group of having ties to the Sri Lankan separatist guerrillas called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, better known as the Tamil Tigers.

"We believe that there are reasonable grounds for concern that TRO (Canada) operates for purposes that conflict with Canadian public policy," the head of Canada's charities directorate wrote in a letter to the group. "More specifically, there appears to be reason to conclude that TRO (Canada) may be functioning as part of a support network for the terrorist organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam."

In the United States, meanwhile, the Treasury Department last year froze the assets of the Tamils Rehabilitation Organization office in Toronto, calling it part of an international network that "passed off its operations as charitable when in fact it was raising money for a designated terrorist group responsible for heinous acts."

Yesterday, Sri Lanka seized the organization's bank accounts in that country on the grounds the $800,000 balance, collected partly from "TRO branches in several foreign locations" was "mainly used to finance terrorist activities."

The Conservatives have not yet taken action and the group continues to operate in Canada, but one of the decisions facing the new Public Safety Minister, Peter Van Loan, will be whether to designate the TRO a terrorist "entity" under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which would force it to close.

Federal officials declined to say whether they were preparing to add the TRO to Canada's official list of terrorist groups. "It would be inappropriate for me to comment on which entities are under consideration for potential listing; the assessment process for new listings is ongoing," said Stephane Therien, a spokesman for Public Safety Canada.

Raj Gunanathan, the president of TRO Canada, said he fears that could happen, but he has long faced these kinds of allegations. They began as soon as the group set up shop in Toronto more than a dozen years ago. Since then, Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers have repeatedly visited his office.

"They used to come at least once a year," Mr. Gunanathan said in an interview. He said he told the intelligence officers to "please come and join our board, or send someone to join our board of directors, and then you will have no doubt about what we are doing."

The Tamils Rehabilitation Organization is open about what it does: It raises money in Canada and sends it to rebel-held territories of Sri Lanka. The money goes to the TRO headquarters, which is entrusted to use it to administer humanitarian aid.

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