The distinction between Islamic & LTTE terrorism is no longer valid. Western security agencies should disrupt the sitting target that is the LTTE, thus damaging Islamist terror operations that are using LTTE structures and facilities to operate.

Now evidence is emerging which portrays the LTTE as individuals who are so unhinged that they have agreed to ditch their "freedom fighter" pretext forever and are now at one with the craven Islamist perpetrators of 911 and 7/7. This decision is even more shocking in that - by uniting with the worst of Islamist terror groups - their main fundraising bases in Canada, Australia, the UK and Europe are suddenly starting to take note of the LTTE's extortion rackets and "commercial" activities taking place on their home soil, which together are the LTTE's lifeblood.

Whereas before police forces in these territories saw LTTE crimes as an insular Sri Lankan problem and "not something that will affect our peace or our prosperity" (similar to their approach towards the crimes of Chinese triads) suddenly the LTTE, by their choices, have opened a Pandora's box, where the likelihood is that their international fundraising activities will be stamped out and their international shipping fleet will eventually become sitting ducks for allied ships and planes. For the LTTE have now visibly chosen sides in the War on Terror and evidently they are sided with the enemy.  

In a document titled "The Struggle for Tamil Eelam and the Liberation Tigers", released by the LTTE Intelligence wing and circulated to the organisation's operatives overseas as far back as November 1998, it is stated in its concluding paragraph, "the LTTE has resolved to work in solidarity with the world national liberation movements, socialist states, and international working class parties. We uphold an anti-imperialist policy and therefore we pledge our militant solidarity against western imperialism, neo-colonialists, Zionism, racism and other forces of reaction."

From these statements it is obvious that the LTTE had recognised the usefulness of engaging with other dubious groups around the world regardless of their origins and purposes at least a decade ago. Current intelligence shows that the LTTE is now engaging with other terrorist groups - notably Islamist terror groups - with the objective of furthering their arms procurement requirements and pursuing their commercial interests in areas such as drug trafficking, human and arms smuggling and money laundering. In the above statement the LTTE's Intelligence wing needed to spell out a basis which tidily concealed / conceals their real objective for interaction with other terrorist groups.

It is a well known fact that LTTE cadres were initially trained by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine at the Bekaa Valley in South Lebanon between 1976 and 1984 where the concepts of "taxation", martyrdom (suicide), political assassinations/killings, war memorials, and "internationalising" the cause of the LTTE were borrowed.

Later, when Rajiv Gandhi, the then Indian Prime Minister, faced difficulty in persuading Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE, to accept the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987, the then head of the PLO office in New Delhi contacted him and offered his good offices for making Prabhakaran amenable to reason.  After politely rejecting his offer, Rajiv Gandhi - assassinated by the LTTE in December 1989 -  had enquiries made as to how the PLO representative claimed to have influence over Prabhakaran.  They revealed that without the knowledge of the Government of India, the PLO representative had been clandestinely interacting with Prabhakaran, the late Kittu and other LTTE leaders (likely also extending financial assistance to them).

Throughout the 1990s, reports from Afghanistan confirmed the presence of LTTE members passing on military training to Asian and Arab nationals. This included: a report from a British specialist who visited Afghanistan in the early 1990s, a debriefing in Musafarabad, Azad, Kashmir of a Pakistani Inter‑Services‑Intelligence (ISI) officer in 1995 and a debriefing in New Delhi in October 2001 of a member of a Kashmiri group who observed the presence of 10‑15 LTTE trainers in the Shinuwari camp in Afghanistan.

In addition to conducting basic and advanced training inside Afghanistan, Al Qaeda training teams that visited regional conflicts included LTTE members. Intelligence agencies are well aware that the LTTE was involved in the 1990's in training the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) both of which are closely linked to al-Qaeda. In 1995 and 1998, an LTTE combat tactician and an LTTE explosives expert accompanying groups of Al Qaeda Arabs was recorded training members of MILF. In 1999, an LTTE combat tactician accompanying a group of Al Qaeda Arabs was recorded training members of the ASG. At the apparent behest of Al Qaeda, the LTTE is recorded training members of Al Ummah (An Islamic terrorist group formed in India in 1992, believed to be responsible for bombings in southern India in 1998) in Tamil Nadu, India.

An article in the ‘Times of India' (24.09.2001) stated that "the LTTE's relationship with al-Qaeda was in focus to understand the latter's mastery in suicide attacks even though most groups learn by trial and error". The article added that "Al Qaeda links with the LTTE are the first instance of an Islamist group collaborating with an essentially secular outfit". The article went on to say that the growing closeness between the LTTE and Islamist groups was further confirmed when the LTTE's Chief Procurement Officer Tharmalingam Shanmugam Kumaran, alias Kumaran Padmanathan or "KP", (who was then based in Thailand), visited Afghanistan via Dubai & Karachi in May 2001. It was following this development that Interpol issued a red notice (or "international warrant") for "KP", who is still at large. These days  "KP" is shopping in the underworld for the latest technology usable both onshore and at sea, according to Anthony Davis. (In his Jane's Intelligence Review of March 2005, Anthony Davis, a recognised specialist on the terror tactics of the LTTE and its armed wing, presented an in-depth analysis of the LTTE's "shopping spree" in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand " to procure accelerated purchases of dual-use technology and sophisticated communications equipment suitable for use both at sea and onshore".)

The LTTE established linkages with the Mujahiddins in Afghanistan and the Pakistan based Harkat-ul-Mujahiddin in 1987 through close contacts in Karachi. In 1992 there was an exchange of expertise and in 1998 the procurement of SAM missiles and disposable rocket launches, which were later used in attacks on security forces in Sri Lanka. (This stock of missiles ran out by 2001). There is proof that chief procurement officer "KP" travelled to Kabul in May 2001 shortly before the 9/11 events with a view to purchasing a further consignment of SAM missiles. The events of 9/11 however disrupted their supply. In February 2007 a retired Indonesian marine corps General, Erick Wotulo, was trapped in Guam by the FBI in a sting operation and later convicted for his involvement in procuring arms for the LTTE through Islamist groups.

The LTTE sea tiger leader Soosai told BBC's Frances Harrison in 2003 that organisations like Al Qaeda were copying them. His exact words were "I think in Yemen they used our strategy of suicide attacks to blow up an American ship, USS Cole - this is exactly what we used to do." He was of course referring to the LTTE attack on the Sri Lankan naval vessel MV Uhana off the coast of north Sri Lanka in August 2000. The precision and targeting of the hull by the Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen when they attacked the USS Cole in October 2000 was identical to the strategy used by LTTE sea tigers in the preceding months.

A US-based research organisation "Maritime Intelligence Group" based in Washington said Jemaah Islamiya (JI) had been trained in sea-borne guerrilla tactics by LTTE sea tiger veterans. The Maritime Intelligence Group has informed about the risk for attacks against cruise vessels, oil and gas tankers from Jemaah Islamiya using skills learned from their LTTE training.  It is also believed the JI is cooperating with LTTE drug smuggling activities. Jemaah Islamiya meanwhile has transparent links to the Abu Sayaaf Group and Al-Qaeda - LTTE's involvement with JI is enough in itself to show co-operation between Al Qaeda and the LTTE by anyone's book.

The revelation in the official publications of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London (Military Balance 2006 & 2007) which refers to emerging evidence of commercial links between the LTTE and the al-Qaeda movement confirms that researchers on terrorist movements are beginning to unearth further concrete evidence of these links. The LTTE's ability to operate in the West - where security services are burdened by investigating Islamist terror - provides Al Qaeda with a terrorist partner with many years more practice of having infiltrated foreign local and national government agencies. Where al Qaeda needs documentation allowing its operatives to access areas otherwise barred to them, the LTTE-al Qaeda relationship is all the more important:

In February 2007 a Norwegian national, Falk Rovik, who heads an organisation called Norwegians Against Terrorism, revealed how LTTE operatives used their connections with Norwegian Immigration authorities to sell Norwegian passports to al-Qaeda agents. Interpol figures 130,000 Norwegian passports have gone into the hands of these al-Qaeda operatives including a Jihadi group in Algeria. The passports have enabled these terrorists to travel under various names throughout Europe. The LTTE agent in Norway who was involved in the racket - Mike Daniel Jeya - has already been jailed in Oslo following a police investigation. It is likely the LTTE has infiltrated other agencies - just this week in the UK it was revealed 10,000 fraudulent passports were issued in the past year. Two men who obtained false passports were Dhiren Barot and Salaheddine Benyaich. Al Qaeda suspect Barot, from London, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder at Woolwich Crown Court in December and was sentenced to life with a recommendation that he serve forty years. He had seven passports in his true identity and two further passports in fraudulent identities. Moroccan national Benyaich had two British passports in the name of a British citizen born in Brighton. He is currently serving 18 years in Morocco for terror-related offences.

The LTTE supplied forged passports to Ramzi Yousef who bombed the US World Trade Centre, according to counter terrorism expert Aaron Mannes. Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 bombing, was sentenced to a jail term of 240 years without parole and is currently under lock and key in a US federal jail. The attack killed six and injured more than 1,000.

In a startling revelation, India's National Security Adviser, M K Narayanan, stated on the eleventh of February this year in Munich - whilst addressing the Munich Conference on Security Policy - that both Jihadi outfits and the LTTE were relying heavily on funds from trafficking in narcotics and that this has doubled in recent years. The arrest of two LTTE operatives recently in Columbia in a cocaine smuggling racket further corroborates this.

It is well known that the LTTE currently has a fleet of 27 known deep sea going vessels engaged in arms, drugs and human smuggling rackets. The ships traverse international waters under various nom de guerre - often registered in Honduras, Panama or Liberia. LTTE ships transported both weapons and trainees (back and forth) to a port in Turkey from Karachi. The weapons were provided by Harkatul Ansar - an affiliate of Al Qaeda - for the purpose of fighting in Chechnya. The recipient was Al Ansar (Foreign) Mujahidin in Chechnya led by Khatab, a protégé of Osama Bin Laden.

The LTTE has had no qualms over letting its fleet be used for narcotics-running by the heroin barons of Pakistan and Afghanistan or for gun running to the Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front of the Southern Philippines by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen of Pakistan in order to replenish its coffers and arsenal.  It did not hesitate to accept a consignment of arms and ammunition from the ISI of Pakistan in 1993. The LTTE has links to the ‘Golden Triangle' and the ‘Golden Crescent' via Tamil Nadu and Indian officials have proof stating that these drugs are smuggled out from India from the famous South Indian coastal area ‘Tuticorin'. The historical notorious smuggling port of Sri Lankan Northern peninsula, Velvetithurai "VVT", the home of the tiger ruler Prabhakaran and many leaders of their ‘core' groups, smuggles in not only drugs but also weapons, injured cadres, medicines, expertise and all necessary provisions to wage war against the Sri Lankan armed forces.

Although the LTTE has denied its role in trafficking narcotics as a source of revenue, V. Mancharan, the current head of the LTTE International Secretariat, Paris, was fined 120,000 francs on March 25, 1985 and was imprisoned for three years in France for possession of heroin. During this period, the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran authorised that his salary be paid to his wife - indicative of the group's complicity in the crime.

There are many areas in which the LTTE has mastered and brought to perfection certain terrorist tactics. Both suicide bombing, targeted political assassinations conducted by the LTTE and those later practiced by Al Qaeda and by Chechen separatist movements show that guerrilla tactics are constantly being - and have for some time been - copied and shared by these movements. The LTTE has a well established network of "legitimate" businesses which provide funds as well as logistics for their activities. In interesting new developments, Jihadi terrorist organisations have begun to follow suit.

The LTTE's use of an ultra light aircraft to drop three bombs at the engineering depot of a Sri Lanka Air Force Base north of Colombo this month (26/03) made it the only terrorist organisation in the world today to demonstrate an offensive air capability. (A Palestinian terrorist group however pioneered this when it launched a successful hang glider raid on an Israeli army camp in the 1990s. As far back as 1963 the Biafran separatists of the Ibo tribe in Nigeria flew a light aircraft armed with rockets over Lagos). Al Qaeda has not so far demonstrated that it has its own air offensive capability even though it has demonstrated that it has pilots who could hijack international flights and use them in suicide missions as demonstrated on 11th September 2001 in New York and Washington.

The LTTE raises approximately US $70 million annually from Europe through commercial activities and extortion of Tamil diasporas. Britain - by allowing the LTTE to operate in its territory - exports a 7/7 to Sri Lanka every two weeks. But intelligence agencies here in the UK - where the LTTE has dramatically infiltrated local government - continue to deal with the LTTE as a "non Islamic" terrorist group in spite of the growing evidence of teamwork above. It will not be long before Al Qaeda begins to use proxies such as the LTTE and its fronts and cadres to carry out key commercial and facilitative operations in countries such as the UK and the rest of Europe if it is not doing so already (as it is already in Norway). Intelligence points to the fact that the LTTE have already had conversations with the operations previously run by AQ Khan - the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb - LTTE procurement in future is likely to become even more significant to the world than it is now.

Their structures and raison d'etres may be different but - like cancers - their homicidal aims are fundamentally the same. Before the cancers further amalgamate and cause us in the West further bother, it is unquestionably time to eliminate the LTTE. This will help the world defeat the cancer of Islamist terror. Hit the LTTE now and force the Islamist terror networks to do their own operational dirty work, thus making themselves far more prone to mistakes and failure.

Give them an All Party Parliamentary Group "for Tamils" at the British House of Commons? Why? The LTTE are not representing Tamils, they are representing the proscribed terrorist entity called the LTTE. (The APPG-T has about as much legitimacy in the House of Westminster as the much-sold signature of its chief, the disgraced MP Keith Vaz).

The LTTE are no "freedom fighters". Alongside their bosom buddies, Al Qaeda, the LTTE are fighting against our freedoms, having lost sight completely of their original goal, as they have been dragged further and further into that blinding kind of darkness from which there is no way out.

Dominic Whiteman is spokesperson for and a Director of the London unit of the VIGIL anti-terrorist organization - an international network of terror trackers, including former intelligence officers, military personnel and experts ranging from linguistic to banking experts. VIGIL's primary concern is monitoring the Islamist threat to freedom.

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