Four Plead Guilty to Conspiring to Provide Material Support to the LTTE
karthika
Four Plead Guilty to Conspiring to Provide Material Support to the
LTTE, a Foreign Terrorist Organization
WASHINGTON, June 9, 2009
Defendants Include the Leader of the LTTE in the United States and one
of the LTTE's Senior Arms Procurement Agents
Earlier today, at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, defendants
Karunakaran Kandasamy, Pratheepan Thavaraja, Murugesu Vinayagamoorthy,
and Vijayshanthar Patpanathan pled guilty to, among other crimes,
conspiring to provide material support to the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a designated foreign terrorist organization. The
guilty plea proceedings were held before Chief United States District
Judge Raymond J. Dearie. Kandasamy and Pratheepan face a 20-year
maximum statutory sentence. Vinayagamoorthy and Patpanathan face a 15-
year maximum statutory sentence.
The LTTE was founded in 1976 and uses illegal methods to raise money,
acquire weapons and technology, and publicize its cause of
establishing an independent Tamil state in northern Sri Lanka. The
LTTE began its armed conflict against the Sri Lankan government in
1983, and utilizes a guerrilla strategy that often includes acts of
terrorism. With an army of several thousand combatants, the LTTE had,
until the last several months, controlled most of the northern and
eastern coastal areas of Sri Lanka. Over the past 17 years, the LTTE
has conducted over 200 suicide bombings, resulting in the deaths of
hundreds of victims, and carried out numerous political
assassinations, including the May 1991 assassination of former Indian
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi; the 1993 assassination of the President
of Sri Lanka, Ranasinghe Premadasa; the July 1999 assassination of
Neelan Thiruchelvam, a member of the Sri Lankan parliament; the June
2000 assassination of C.V. Goonaratne, the Sri Lankan Industry
Minister; the August 2006 assassination of the Sri Lankan government's
peace secretariat, Ketheshwaran Loganathan; the January 2008
assassination of Sri Lankan Minister for Nation Building, D.M.
Dassanayake; and the April 2008 assassination of Sri Lankan Highways
Minister, Jeyaraj Fernandopulle. Beginning in 2002, the LTTE and the
Sri Lankan government operated under a tenuous cease-fire agreement,
but that agreement ended, and between April 2006 and May 2009, tens of
thousands of people were killed in the escalating conflict. In May
2009, after 25 years of armed conflict, the current LTTE leadership
was defeated by the Sri Lankan military, resulting in the death of
LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and several other senior LTTE
officials.
The LTTE relies on sympathetic Tamil expatriates residing in the
United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, and
several other countries to raise and launder money and smuggle arms,
explosives, equipment, and technology into LTTE-controlled territory.
To coordinate these activities, the LTTE established "branches" in at
least 12 countries, including the United States. Defendant Kandasamy
was the director of the American branch of the LTTE, which operated
through charitable front organizations, including the Tamil
Rehabilitation Organization ("TRO"). As the director of the American
branch, Kandasamy oversaw and directed the LTTE's various activities
in the United States, including raising millions of dollars for the
LTTE and laundering it through the TRO. Defendant Vijayshanthar
Patpanathan assisted Kandasamy and others in these fundraising and
money laundering activities.
Defendant Pratheepan Thavaraja was a senior procurement agent for the
LTTE, involved in the purchase of improvised explosive devices,
missiles, machine guns, artillery, radar, and other equipment and
technology from countries around the world, including the United
States. A single spreadsheet of "priority" items to purchase, which
was found in Pratheepan's laptop computer, totaled $20 million in arms
and equipment. It included, among other things, six "25mm Anti
Aircraft Gun[s]" at $160,000 each, six "30 mm Twin Barrel Mounted
Naval Gun[s] Type 69 (with base)" at $30,000 each, thousands of
automatic rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, grenade launchers,
50 tons of C4 explosive, five tons of "Phlegmatized RDX" explosive, 50
tons of "TNT -- based on Chinese specification," and 50 tons of
Tritonal explosive. Pratheepan and defendant Murugesu Vinayagamoorthy
were also involved in the attempted bribery of purported U.S. State
Department officials to remove the LTTE from the list of designated
foreign terrorist organizations. In addition, Vinayagamoorthy
participated in laundering LTTE money through a Swiss bank account to
covertly fund a U.S. Congressman's trip to LTTE-controlled territory
in Sri Lanka.
"Just weeks after the LTTE's leaders in Sri Lanka were defeated in
that country, the leader of the LTTE in the United States and other
LTTE supporters have been brought to justice," said U.S. Attorney
Campbell. "The defendants were convicted for their involvement in
efforts to raise millions of dollars and acquire arms and technology
for use by the LTTE." Mr. Campbell added that this successful
prosecution is the result of a coordinated international effort by law
enforcement led by the Newark and New York Divisions of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation's Joint Terrorism Task Force, with assistance
provided by more than 20 of the FBI's Field Offices, including New
Haven, Buffalo, Seattle, Baltimore, Chicago, and San Jose; the United
States Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut; U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the U.S. Department of
State; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police National Security Program;
and British and Indonesian law enforcement authorities.
The government's LTTE cases are being prosecuted by Assistant U.S.
Attorneys Jeffrey H. Knox, Andrew E. Goldsmith, Greg D. Andres and
Marshall L. Miller
The Defendants:
KARUNAKARAN KANDASAMY, also known as "Karuna"
PRATHEEPAN THAVARAJA, also known as "Raja Pratheepan," "Thambi
Sampras," and "Steeban"
MURUGESU VINAYAGAMOORTHY, also known as "Dr. Moorthy" and
"Vinayagamoorthy Murugesu"
VIJAYSHANTHAR PATPANATHAN, also known as "Chandru"
SOURCE U.S. Department of Justice