Officials: Tamil group not a threat in Cambodia [-Only the CPP can be a threat to Cambodia?]

PHNOM PENH, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Local and U.S. officials in Phnom Penh have downplayed the threat of the non-profit Tamil Foundation, which allegedly had ties with Sri Lanka's separatist Tamil Tigers, the Phnom Penh Post reported on Wednesday.

"We got a note from the Treasury (Department of U.S.), and it's something we are required to distribute to the local government. It's just a heads-up. It's not something serious here," the English-language daily newspaper quoted U.S. Embassy spokesman John Johnson as saying.

The U.S. government had sent a generic message to all its embassies indicating that its Treasury Department had designated the Tamil Foundation, a charity based in U.S., as a terrorist group and frozen its assets, according to the spokesman.

Meanwhile, Koy Kuong, secretary of state at the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, told the paper "this is just an exchange of information. We don't have a Tamil Foundation in Cambodia."

"U.S. learned that the Tamil Foundation had established offices in other countries, so they are seeking international cooperation, but we haven't heard of this group operating in Cambodia," he added.

The paper on Tuesday quoted national police spokesman Keat Chantarith as saying that "we are looking into the case" of the Tamil Foundation, under the request of the foreign ministry.

In February, the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation sent a letter to Interior Minister Sar Kheng, asking him to investigate the actions of the foundation which allegedly supported the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The foreign ministry sent the letter after receiving a diplomatic notice from the U.S. Embassy warning of the existence of the Tamil Foundation, which had offices in many countries.

Cambodia mulls probe of foundation supporting LTTE

PHNOM PENH, March 9 (Xinhua) -- The Cambodian government was considering to investigate the actions of a local foundation which allegedly supported Sri Lanka's separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, said national media on Monday.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation has sent a letter to Interior Minister Sar Kheng to request him to do so, said English-Khmer language newspaper the Cambodia Daily.

The foreign ministry received a diplomatic notice from the U.S. Embassy warning of the existence of the U.S.-based Tamil Foundation, the paper quoted the letter dated Feb. 26 as saying.

"Please, Minister, be informed about the organization and take measures to investigate the actions of this organization," said the letter, while not elaborating whether the Tamil Foundation was known to be active within Cambodia.

In July 2007, international security magazine the Jane's Intelligence Review reported that Cambodia was a significant source of weapons for the Tamil Tigers, but failed to mention its sources.

The Cambodian government denied it at the time, saying that Cambodia had destroyed many of its surplus arms and that the report referred to the situation before 1998.

Sri Lanka: LTTE has strong links with Thai military - Insider [-Cambodia is home base for LTTE arms procurer?]

Thursday, 11 October 2007
Posted at SiberNews.com

There was extensive news coverage of Shanmugan Kumaran Tharmalingam (a.k.a Kumaran Pathmanathan and KP), chief procurer of arms of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is based in Thailand and that he has been arrested by the Thai authorities. The credible news of his presence in Thailand has not been reported so far. The LTTE uses Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia as its main operating hub and extensive network of clandestine operations are carried out using Singapore as its financial centre.

All the activities are commanded by KP who is on the move all the time between the hub countries. Some of the Malaysian based LTTE activists who are said to be professionals give valuable support to legitimise the nefarious deeds of the clandestine activities of the Tamil Tigers in the area. A Sri Lankan lawyer Pasupathy based in Malaysia is confirmed to be the head of professionals working under KP.

KP’s activities further stretches to the renounced pariah state of President Mugabe i.e., Zimbabwe, where he is able move-about without any difficulties. He is said to be travelling between Cambodia, Thailand and Zimbabwe under false names and identity. Cambodia is said to be the main place of residence of KP.

It is known the LTTE has heavily bribed the Thai military officials. In 2002 when LTTE delegation met the Sri Lankan officials in Bangkok for peace talks some members of the delegation was taken by a senior Thai military commander accompanied by soldiers to meet KP in the interiors of north-eastern jungle. The delegation members (names withheld) had lengthy meeting in a tea boutique and they had discussed operational issues of the LTTE.

The Thai military had provided security throughout the four hour meeting with KP. Once the meeting was over, the delegation members were taken back to Bangkok in military vehicles.

This visit of the delegation members had taken place when LTTE mentor Anton Balasingam was tussling (refer to Anton Balasingam’s hero’s day speech in 2004) with few other members whom were visiting the red light areas of Bangkok.

Experts: Cambodia Fertile Ground for Tamil Tigers

Brian Calvert, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
01 October 2007

Cambodian authorities recently broke up a human smuggling network run in part by the Tamil Tigers. The involvement of the Sri Lankan separatist group in illegal activities in Cambodia came as no surprise to experts, who have watched the sophisticated insurgency transform in Phnom Penh since it began buying Cambodian weapons in the 1990s.

"The operations in Cambodia still exist to a great extent. However, it may not be focused in the same areas that it was focused in the late '90s," said Shanaka Jayasekara, a terrorism researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, no longer need Cambodia as a place to "mop up" old weapons, Jayasekara told VOA Khmer, echoing other interviews with analysts and government officials over several weeks.

Their weapons purchases are more sophisticated now, but the criminal infrastructure put in place in the early 1990s, when Cambodia was its primary arms bazaar, is still there, enabling drugs and human smuggling, credit card fraud and money laundering.

"The LTTE has been involved in the narcotics trade for quite some time. They have also facilitated human smuggling of the Tamil diaspora through some of the Southeast Asian countries," Jayasekara said.

Cambodia authorities say in August they broke up an operation run in part by Tamil Tigers intent on smuggling up to 250 Pakistanis and Sri Lankans to Western nations and Australia.

The bust was an indicator that efforts from Sri Lankan and Cambodian officials to unseat Tamil Tiger operations in the county had not been successful.

The Tamil Tigers earn hundreds of millions of dollars each year by collecting money from Tamil immigrant communities. The Tamil people belong to a minority group in northern Sri Lanka and southern India, but Tamil expatriates live in many Western countries, including Canada, Norway and Australia. A lot of money comes from these groups, either by choice or through coercion, experts said.

Meanwhile, the Tamil Tigers also earn money by running guns to groups like the Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group in the Philippines. And they smuggle Tamil people into Western countries.

This helps the Tamil Tigers fill their war chest and continue their separatist fight against the Sri Lankan government, Jayasekara says.

"It's a kind of a business opportunity for the LTTE. They make money out of it. They also do it to take their key operatives to certain locations and place them in vital destinations so that their international network can be run more efficiently," Jayasekara said.

At least two Tamil operatives escaped Cambodia's August dragnet: Ranni Lerin and his brother, Lipton Lerin, who operated their human smuggling ring out of a cafe in Phnom Penh, authorities said in September.

The Cambodian government made a public call to Interpol to help them capture the men.

Jayasekara said the flight of the two brothers likely has not halted the group's activities, which are now being run by a man who officials know little about.

Officials say more needs to be done to rein in the Tamil Tigers, who have invented devices—including the suicide vest—and innovated techniques that reach Islamic terrorists.

"The LTTE has growing links with other terrorist organizations like the al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah," said Dr. Palitha Kohona, the Sri Lankan Secretary of Foreign Affairs in Colombo and an expert on the Tamil Tigers.

The innovative Tamil Tigers, who have been fighting for a separate Tamil state since 1975, has its own navy, merchant vessels and a small air force. The insurgency has led to the deaths of more than 60,000 people.

Countries like Cambodia and Sri Lanka need help in pursuing the group, Kohona said. "We need expertise," he said.

"We need intelligence gathering assistance."

The US, meanwhile, has listed the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization.

Earlier this year, US agencies disrupted a Tamil Tiger plot to smuggle high-tech weapons, missiles, ammunition and night-vision goggles out of the US.

Undercover officers acting as State Department officials also caught operatives attempting to bribe them to have the Tamil Tigers taken off the US terrorist list.

The problems Sri Lanka is facing with the Tamil Tigers will become the problems of wealthier countries if more isn't done to stop the group, in undeveloped countries like Cambodia and in developed nations of the West," Kohona said.

"Terrorism is not an issue for one country. It is an issue for the entire sea of humanity," he said. "Terrorism is a scourge that has to be eliminated wherever it might be found."

Authorities Seek Interpol Help After Breaking Up Trafficking Ring

Chiep Mony, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
11 September 2007

Cambodian police said Tuesday they had broken up a human trafficking ring in August, but three foreigners who were arrested have already been extradited and four ringleaders had eluded capture.

The international human smuggling racket would have moved more than 200 people from Pakistan and Sri Lanka through Cambodia en route to other countries, police said.

Police extradited two men, Thanga Veluram and Thanga Velusarawanachathes, to Sri Lanka and one man, Mohammed Nurula, to Pakistan, in September, following their arrest in late August, a human rights official said Tuesday.

Cambodia meanwhile hoped to enlist Interpol in its search for four leaders of the trafficking ring, police spokesman Maj. Gen. Chhay Sinarith said.

Cambodia was seeking two men from Sri Lanka and two from Pakistan in connection to the smuggling racket, he said.

Chhay Sinarith named the Sri Lankans as Mariam Pillai Lerin Ranni, who owned the Curry Leaf restaurant in Phnom Penh, and his brother, Lipton Lerin, and the Pakistanis as Muhhamad Nadim, who ran the Taj Mahal restaurant in Siem Reap, and a man known only as Gamini, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

The two Sri Lankans named by AP were members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, a security expert in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday.

An Interpol spokeswoman said Tuesday the agency was seeking further information from its Cambodian office on whether an official request had been filed there.

In the 1990s, Cambodia was a major source of weapons for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, who fund their insurgency against the Sri Lankan government in part with profits from human trafficking.

Top Sri-Lankan Tamil Tiger arrested in Bangkok: "Cambodia is the hub of the LTTE East Asia Network"

Top Tamil Tiger arrested in Bangkok

Tuesday September 11, 2007
BangkokPost.com, Agencies

Thailand has arrested the finance chief of the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, allegedly the group's chief procurer of arms.

Kumaran Pathmanadan is reported to have been arrested by police in Bangkok on Monday evening. He is one of the top officials in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the formal name of the group.

Pathmanadan apparently had obtained Thai citizenship. He continued to run the global network of LTTE offices and its weapons procurement, logistics and money laundering operations.

He has been on Interpol's Most Wanted list for a number of years. He has also been implicated in several assassinations of political leaders.

The online newspaper Asian Tribune called him "the king pin of Tiger arms smuggling".

"He is a noted smuggler of arms and narcotics. Operating with bank accounts opened in London, Frankfurt, Denmark, Athens and Australia... he has had a free run so far," the newspaper alleged

His arrest followed the detention in Ranong province last month of three Tamil Tiger operatives trying to buy guns and 45,000 rounds of ammuntion.

All four were suspected of running a Tamil Tiger gun-running ring centered in Thailand.

Pathmanadan, who also had a number of aliases, has recently been the subject of a manhunt that stretched to Johannesburg, Rangoon, Singapore and Bangkok. Police said they believed he had bank accounts in London, Frankfurt Denmark, Athens and Australia and has over 200 passports for his use.

He and his group are suspected of running weapons purchased Thailand and neighbouring countries to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. The Tigers have been desinated as a terrorist group by most western countries, but not Thailand.

A Jane's Intelligence report on the group stated that despite the cease-fire agreement in Sri Lanka, the LTTE continued to re-supply cadres. It said:

"While Cambodia is the hub of the LTTE East Asia Network, Thailand continues to serve as the most important country for trans-shipment of munitions and coordination of logistics... its excellent communications infrastructure, proximity to former war zones in both Cambodia and [Burma] and its western coastline facing the Bay of Bengal and Sri Lanka beyond have made Thailand the ancient interface between the LTTE's war zone."

Khieu Kanarith denies Khieu Sopheak's earlier admission of illegal arms supply from Cambodia to Sri Lankan rebels

Cambodia Denies Role in Sri Lanka Weapons Supply

Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
23 July 2007

A government spokesman Monday denied a report that Sri Lanka's grinding civil war was still significantly supplied by weapons coming from or through Cambodia.

The report, in the well-regarded Jane's Intelligence Review, claimed the Tamil Tigers, a separatist group fighting the Sri Lankan government, were supplied through Cambodia.

"Cambodia is one of the most significant single sources of weapons for the insurgent group," Jane's Intelligence Review said in an online report last week, Agence-France Presse reported.

The Review did not name any sources, AFP reported.

Terrorism experts told VOA Khmer recently that Cambodia acts as a hub for weapon shipments, especially to Sri Lanka, but for other countries in the region as well.

Spokesman Khieu Kanharith Monday denied these reports.

"It is regretful, because I've always respected Jane's Intelligence Review," he said. The magazine "might be able to deceive some, but I am a spokesman, and I understand a lot of things."

He urged an inspection of the serial numbers on the weapons to prove where they come from.

"In Cambodia we have computers, and we register all those weapons, where they are, what year, and we would find them now," he said. "Jane's should not deceive those who don't know anything about it."

The Tamil rebels have been fighting for a separate state since the 1970s and are considered a terrorist group by the US, the UK, the European Union and India, among others.

The Tamil Tigers receive weapons from Afghanistan, Libya, Turkey and the Ukraine, as well as Southeast Asia, the Review reported.

Cambodia has acknowledged in the past a role in the supply of weapons to separatists, but Khieu Kanharith said Monday Cambodia has destroyed most of the weapons left over from its own civil wars.

Tamil Tigers still getting arms from Cambodia: report

LTTE soldiers in Sri Lanka. Tamil Tiger rebels are still getting weapons smuggled from Cambodia, which are fuelling spiralling unrest in Sri Lanka, a security journal reported. (AFP/File/Prakash Singh)

Mon Jul 23, 2007

PHNOM PENH (AFP) - Tamil Tiger rebels are still getting weapons smuggled from Cambodia, which are fuelling spiralling unrest in Sri Lanka, a security journal reported.

"Cambodia is one of the most significant single sources of weapons for the insurgent group," Jane's Intelligence Review said in a report published online last week, without naming any sources.

Interior ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak acknowledged Monday that some weapons might still be getting to the Tigers, but said any smuggling would be small-scale.

"There could be some bad people involved.... We would like information to lead us to the offenders," he told AFP.

"We are victims of weapons, so we don't want people in other countries to suffer the same crisis," he said.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been fighting Sri Lanka's government for an independent homeland since the 1970s in a conflict that has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

Weapons from Cambodia had filled Tiger arsenals in the past, but officials here had assured the Sri Lankan government that the arms trade has stopped.

Cambodia remains awash in arms after decades of civil war. But the government has made efforts to reduce its caches, destroying about 230,000 weapons so far.

Still, porous borders and poor policing have made Cambodia an attractive base for traffickers of various kinds of contraband.

Cambodia remains a significant source of weapons for Sri Lanka's separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

July 23, 2007
Cambodian official admits possible small-scale leakage of weapons

Cambodian official has admitted that some weapons may leak out of the kingdom and if such smuggling occurred, it was likely not large scale, English newspaper Cambodian Daily reported on Monday.

The government has made every effort to shut down illegal weapons trade, Interior Ministry spokesman Lieutenant General Khieu Sopheak was quoted as saying.

"There could be some individuals" involved in smuggling of weapons, said Sopheak, adding that "we would be happy to get information to lead us to the offenders."

Sri Lanka officials present evidence of arms smuggling from Cambodia several years ago, but it has since praised Cambodia's anti-smuggling efforts, he said.

The general made the comments in response to the recent reports that Cambodian remains a significant source of weapons for Sri Lanka's separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam.

Foreign magazine the Jane's Intelligence Review said on its web on Thursday that "Cambodia is one of the most significant single source of weapons for the insurgent group," adding that its weapons also come from elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Source: Xinhua