Top officers to testify via satellite

Top Sri Lankan military, legal and law enforcement officials are set to testify via satellite link from a secret location in Colombo in an Australian court case against three key LTTE activists in that country.

Among the officials who will testify in the committal proceedings which began two weeks ago in Melbourne are the Army Commander Sarath Fonseka, Navy Commander Wasantha Karannagoda, Police Chief Victor Perera, Deputy Solicitor General Yasantha Kodagoda, Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe and several other senior military, police and STF personnel.

The case filed by the Director of Public Prosecutions of the State of Victoria charges Aruran Vinayagamoorthy, Sivarajah Yathavan and Arumugam Rajeewan, currently in Australian custody, with being members of a terrorist organisation and for funding, raising and providing material support to a terrorist organisation.

The Australian prosecutor states that the three suspects were running an LTTE fund-raising network in Australia using a front organisation called the Tamil Co-ordinating Committee, which annually channelled to the LTTE several million Australian dollars, collected in the guise of humanitarian and tsunami aid.

Investigations into the activities of the three suspects began two years ago by the Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT) of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) as part of their anti-terrorism initiative, during which AFP officers met with and obtained the assistance of their counterparts in Sri Lanka to carry out local investigations.

Affidavit evidence provided by senior Sri Lankan officials including the Attorney General C.R. De Silva will be used at the trial.
The role of the Sri Lankan witnesses is to provide evidence and other corroborative material that the LTTE is a terrorist organisation, as opposed to a liberation movement.

Defence officials in Colombo are reported to have taken extreme precautions to ensure that the satellite link testimony runs smoothly and is safe from LTTE sabotage. They remain tight lipped on the location the witnesses are to testify from.If convicted, the LTTE activists are likely to face jail terms of up to 20 years, The Sunday Times learns.