16, February 1997

BRAMPTON, Ont. - Canada's spy agency knew that a translator of wiretaps in a major RCMP smuggling investigation was a senior member of the Tamil Tiger terrorist group, an Ontario court has been told. But the Canadian Security Intelligence Service did not inform the Mounties until long after the man, who is now a Canadian citizen, finished his RCMP translation work, says a front page report in the Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper, of February 12.

The report adds:

"RCMP Corporal Frederick Bowen said he was 'dumfounded' and 'very devastated' in September of 1996 when CSIS agent Gerald Baker showed him photographs of the translator that indicated be used to be a high-ranking member of what Canada considers one of the world's most notorious terrorist organizations.

This revelation is but one of many surfacing in the trial of Kumaravelu Vignarajah, 38, who is being tried on four charges related to an alleged infiltration of the RCMP.

He has pleaded not guilty to breach of trust, stealing an RCMP tape recorder, wiretap tapes and transcripts, possession of stolen property and fraudulently obtaining a blank Sri Lankan birth certificate.

Senior Crown attorney Stephen Sheriff told the court that a number of transcripts of intercepted telephone calls found in Mr. Vignarajah's home referred to money.

The disclosure about Mr. Vignarajah's background as a key aide to a Tiger co-leader is eye-opening for several reasons. He was accepted as a landed immigrant after making a refugee claim in 1989 using his real name and passing a security check by CSIS.

Mr. Sheriff suggested that he might call CSIS agents to testify.

Mr. Vignarajah began working as a wiretap translator in the summer of 1994 after undergoing RCMP security vetting and after furnishing two reference letters from the Military Intelligence Directorate, an arm of the Sri Lankan military fighting against the Tamil Tiger's lengthy and bloody war of independence. An estimated 50,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

One of the letters, which have been introduced as trial exhibits and which the RCMP claim are genuine, says Mr. Vignarajah "has been providing very valuable and accurate intelligence to this organization which has helped the Sri Lankan Security Forces to conduct many military operations to maintain law and order and also to bring about peace to the country."

Cpl. Bowen testified that, in retrospect, he was appalled to learn about "the low level of security clearance" done by the RCMP special investigations unit on people working in the wiretap monitoring room.

"In any future wiretaps that I'm doing, I'm polygraphing all of my employees, or they're not getting the job," he said.

Cpl. Bowen testified that he now is convinced Mr. Vignarajah was both a Sri Lankan military agent and a Tamil Tiger. However, he also said he had no evidence that Mr. Vignarajah ever passed on classified RCMP information to Sri Lankan military intelligence.

Cpl. Bowen said he did not know whether Mr. Vignarajah joined the Tamil Tiger organization before or after becoming engaged by Sri Lankan intelligence.

The Vignarajah case, which resumed today in a heavily guarded courtroom just outside Metropolitan Toronto before Judge Brian Weagant of the Ontario Court's Provincial Division without a jury, not only highlights shadowy aspects of Canada's intelligence agencies, but also opens a window on the ways that Sri Lanka's 13-year civil conflict is played out in Canada, home to 150,000 Tamils.

For the past several years, large numbers of Sri Lankan nationals have come to Canada seeking refugee status. Last year, for example, 2,946 Sri Lankans claimed refugee standing.

One of the key prosecution witnesses in the Vignarajah case is Thalayasingam Sivakumar, a former Tamil Tiger who became a CSIS informant after entering Canada on a false passport.

Mr. Sivakumar, who was denied refugee status and is the subject of Federal Court of Canada deportation proceedings, has testified that he co-operated with CSIS agents seeking intelligence about the Sri Lankan community in Canada in exchange for a promise that he could stay in Canada.

CSIS has publicly acknowledged that Mr. Sivakumar offered "information of interest" over a five-year period beginning in 1989, but denies making the promise. The Security Intelligence Review Committee, the civilian watchdog over SCIS, is conducting an investigation of Mr. Sivakumar's complaint that he was double-crossed by the spy agency.

Mr. Sivakumar was also subpoenaed to testify by lawyers for Manikavasagam Suresh, who was arrested in October of 1995 on a federal government security certificate that claims Mr. Suresh was a Tamil Tiger. The certificate was based on CSIS information.

Lawyers for Mr. Suresh, who has been in detention since his arrest, have argued before the Federal Court that he is neither a terrorist nor a member of a terrorist movement. And even if Mr. Suresh were a member of the Tamil Tigers, known officially as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, it is a legitimate liberation organisation, the lawyers say. Oral submissions in the Suresh case are scheduled for April.

Mr. Vignarajah was arrested and charged last May and has been held in detention since. A two-day preliminary hearing in December was converted to a full trial on Jan. 6, thus lifting the court-imposed publication ban.

Mr. Vignarajah was originally charged with perjury in connection with claims that he had denied on entering Canada that he killed Indian peacekeeping troops in a 1987 ambush.

That charge, which had been based in part on a photo showing an armed Mr. Vignarajah standing over a dead Indian peace keeper, has been withdrawn. The prosecution conceded that the photograph, published by India Today magazine in 1987, was a propaganda shot staged after the Indians had been ambushed by other Tamil Tigers and that it could not prove Mr. Vignarajah was involved "in the homicide directly."

Mr. Sheriff also withdrew a charge of obstructing justice involving allegations that Mr. Vignarajah used information from his translation work to tip targets of an investigation of a group within the Tamil community on suspicions of passport forgery and smuggling of illegal aliens into Canada.

The investigation was code-named Project Elias. Mr. Sheriff said that Mr. Vignarajah could not have been responsible for one leak about a listening device placed in a Tamil grocery store by the RCMP because he hadn't yet started work as a translator.

According to court testimony, Mr. Vignarajah also known by the code-name Nishanthan started to work for the RCMP in June of 1994 as a part-time translator of wire tapped conversations relating to Project Elias.

At the time Mr. Vignarajah was working as a teller at a bank branch in Brampton where the wife of an RCMP officer who supervised translators in the Project Elias investigation also worked.

He was computer literate and he was fluent in both English and Tamil. Mr. Sheriff told the court in laying out the prosecution case.

He appeared to be responsibly employed in the local community. Accordingly he looked at first blush as an ideal candidate.

The court also has heard evidence that Mr. Vignarajah was intent on applying to become an RCMP member.

Mr. Vignarajah's work on Project Elias which resulted in a number of convictions ended on Feb. 11 , 1995 but it was not until several months later that Cpl. Bowen got a tip about Mr. Vignarajah's past in Sri Lanka and started to pursue an investigation.

Cpl. Bowen said that when he and another RCMP member confronted Mr. Vignarajah about his Tiger past, he was in a state of shock. He physically started trembling, he was shaking, his eyes almost bulged right out of his head.

The officer testified that Mr. Vignarajah offered to work as an agent to provide the RCMP with inside information about the Tamil Tigers and about immigration frauds and passport forgeries.

Mr. Sivakumar, the CSIS informant and former Tamil Tiger major testified that he told CSIS agent Dann Martel in 1990 that Mr. Vignarajah who had arrived in Canada the previous year, was a Tamil Tiger. Mr Sivakumar said Mr. Martel later showed and asked him to identify photographs of Mr. Vignarajah.

Mr. Sivakumar who was paid for some of his CSIS work said he spoke to Mr. Martel more than five times about Mr. Vignarajah and was surprised that CSIS did not inform the RCMP about him.

In his opening address Mr. Sheriff said "unfortunately, there was no communication by CSIS to the RCMP prior to the accused being hired by the RCMP to alert the RCMP as to what back ground this accused might have."

In his cross-examination of Mr. Sivakumar, Mr. Vignarajah's lawyer Patrick Clement has sought to demonstrate that RCMP security screening of wiretap translators, was so loose that some started working even before swearing an oath of allegiance and confidentiality.

Mr. Clement has also sought to suggest that Mr. Vignarajah was perfectionist in his translations and that it would not have been uncommon for RCMP employees to take confidential materials home to work on.

Moreover he has tried to paint Mr. Sivakumar and another former Tamil Tiger who testified for the Crown as people who would do anything, including becoming CSIS informants and putting their lives in danger by testifying publicly in order to try to remain in Canada."-Toronto Star

By Christopher Kamalendran

Another child-sex scandal is being investigated by the CID following information that girls under the age of 10 were allegedly molested by a director at a children's home run with foreign aid in Papiliyana.

The first evidence of the children being molested emerged after four girls from this home who were going to a nearby govt. school had complained to their teachers that they were being sexually abused by a top man of this home.

The four girls told their teachers they were sexually abused at the home and had no option but to remain there because of poverty in their own homes.

On Monday, CID officers visited the school to record statements from the girls, but surprisingly the children who had been regularly attending classes were not present that day.

The next day the principal of the school received a letter from the director of the children's home saying he wanted the leaving certificates of the students.

On Thursday, the police again visited the school to get more information from teachers and the principal.

'The Sunday Times' spoke to the three of the children when our reporters visited the school on February 6 before the CID swooped in.

The children claimed, "We were sexually abused and when we complained to the matron of the home she said not to take the matter seriously and asked us to shut up".

A school teacher who did not wish to be identified said the children had regularly complained about the harassment, but she was not in a position to do anything.

"The children were saying that if they went to their own homes they would not have even food, so they preferred to stay on", the teacher said.

The girls are visited by their parents on poya days but it seems the families were unaware of these alleged happenings.

With the sex racket coming to light the teachers of the school fear the children's education also maybe hampered by these allegedly sordid happenings.

This official of the home apparently receiving foreign funds has acted as a philanthropist and even donated musical instruments for the band of the school.

Papiliyana police on Friday took into custody a Buddhist monk who was a trustee of this Japanese aided Noguchi children's home in Pepiliyana in connection with an alleged molestation of some girl-inmates of the orphanage.

Four girls - all below the age of 10 - who were allegedly abused, were attending a junior school in Pepiliyana, while being inmates at the children's home.

The alleged incident of child abuse came to light when the girls were interrogated by the police on a complaint made by a provincial councillor in the area and teachers.

The victims have now been admitted to Hospital for medical examination.

UNP parliamentarian A.H.M. Azwer has called on President Chandrika Kumaratunga to re-schedule the Friday election date as it would cause immense problems to Muslims who attend their Jumma prayers during daytime.

Mr. Azwer said in a statement that numerous polling agents who are stationed at polling booths will undergo hardships if the elections were to coincide with the Jumma prayers.

"The Jumma Prayer is compulsory for every Muslim," he said.

"Therefore I request, that the polling date be shifted to another day excepting a Friday," he said in a letter to President Kumaratunga.