Canadian financed terror bombs, Sri Lankans say
Tamil Tigers used TNT to kill dozens in 1996 attack

Stewart Bell
National Post

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - The explosives used by ethnic Tamil insurgents to wage a brutal bombing campaign that has killed and injured hundreds of civilians have been traced to an offshore bank account held by a Canadian, Sri Lankan intelligence sources allege.

A Singapore bank account opened by a Canadian of Sri Lankan origin was used to pay for 60 tons of explosives -- 10 tons of RDX and 50 tons of TNT -- imported from the Ukraine by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, senior intelligence officials said.

The explosives were used in a 1996 daytime bomb attack at the Central Bank of Sri Lanka in downtown Colombo that killed 86 civilians and injured 1,400, the officials said, and have also been deployed for a series of subsequent bombings.

"They are still using it," a senior Sri Lankan intelligence official told the National Post.

"Out of the 60 tons, they are estimated to have used only 30 tons."

The allegation is the latest evidence that Canada is being used as a support base for terrorist attacks on foreign soil and follows an alleged plot by Algerian extremists in Montreal to "punish America" by staging a bomb attack against the United States.

Sri Lankan forces are battling hardline ethnic Tamil nationalists who want to form a separate state called Tamil Eelam in the north and east of the island, off the southern tip of India.

In addition to fighting a ground war in the jungles, the LTTE has been assassinating politicians and bombing civilian targets in an attempt to destabilize the nation. Last week, a municipal politician was assassinated in Jaffna, a suicide bomber tried to kill a senior military officer in Trincomalee, and a grenade was thrown at a cabinet minister visiting a temple at Mihintale.

The attacks follow a series of bus bombings earlier this year and the attempted assassination in December of the president, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga.

Norway is attempting to bring the government and rebels together for peace talks, but there has been little progress to date.

Plastic explosives are a preferred weapon of the LTTE, or Tamil Tigers, and are used in everything from the vests worn by suicide bombers to the crude "Johny Special" land mines buried throughout the northern Jaffna Peninsula.

The Tigers acquired a large cache of explosives six years ago by posing as the Bangladesh Armed Forces and purchasing the chemicals from the Rubezone chemical plant in Ukraine.

The clandestine purchase was documented by Rohan Kumar Gunaratna, author of Sri Lanka's Ethnic Crisis and National Security, who called it the "largest consignment of explosives ever to be moved by a terrorist group."

The Sri Lankan government has passed the details of the alleged Canadian connection and the name of the holder of the bank account to law enforcement agencies in this country.

Canada has granted refugee status to thousands of Sri Lankans over the past two decades, most of them ethnic Tamils, who complain of mistreatment at the hands of the country's ethnic Singhalese majority. Some remain sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers and have provided financial support for the rebel force, partly through organizations described by the U.S. as fronts for the LTTE.

Canada is currently attempting to deport a former leader of the World Tamil Movement, a Sri Lankan who Canadian intelligence says was sent by the Tamil Tigers to run a fundraising network in Toronto.

The intelligence officials in Sri Lanka said there is a direct link between overseas fundraising drives by the LTTE and rebel attacks. "We found that the amounts collected match up to some of the military successes here," one official said.

The central bank bombing in Colombo was one of the most brutal acts in the 17-year history of the civil war. It took place during working hours, ostensibly to maximize the casualties. Among those killed were a Canadian and her two-year-old daughter, who were visiting family at the time.

Zainulabdeen Mohamad Rafeek was in his office at the American Express Bank when he heard the initial blasts. He thought it had to do with construction next door.

Then he heard three shots.

He ran into the bank foyer and saw people on the streets, crying and running. The blasts were mortars fired by Tamil insurgents trying to take out the central bank, just across the street. Mr. Rafeek had just finished shepherding his employees out of harm's way when an explosion knocked him off his feet.

"I was about to return to my desk when the bomb went off," he said. "Immediately when I heard this noise I recited part of the Koran," said Mr. Rafeek, a Muslim, "and I was just thrown out of the building."

The explosion sent fragments of glass into his eyeballs and, despite a series of operations, he is still blind. Further surgery was needed to replace his chin, which was blown off.

"The best thing is to forget about the past," he said. "It should come to an end," he said of the fighting, which has killed 60,000. "I don't want anyone else to suffer, to undergo what I have undergone."