Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Authorities eye aid from Tamil Tigers to identify migrants

Canada also considering seeking assistance from Sri Lankan government to determine whether men a security risk

Jane Armstrong

Vancouver From Tuesday's Globe and Mail


Canadian authorities are considering tracking down known Tamil Tigers – some outside the country – to help them distinguish potential terrorists from genuine refugees among the 76 Tamil men who arrived in a boat off Vancouver Island in October.

The government is also considering seeking assistance from the Sri Lankan government as it attempts to delve into the backgrounds of these men who claim to be refugees fleeing postwar Sri Lanka.

The revelations were made at a detention hearing Monday for one of the Tamil migrants, who remains behind bars in a Vancouver-area detention centre. Government lawyer Ron Yamauchi was making the case to keep the man in custody for security reasons.

The Immigration and Refugee Board has so far sided with the government's position that these mysterious men must stay in custody because there is reasonable grounds to believe they might be inadmissible to Canada on security grounds. But the men can't be held in detention indefinitely. At some point, the government must seek to have them sent home or allow them to be released while their refugee claims proceed.

Some security experts have suggested that the migrant ship was filled with Tamil Tigers, the violent separatist group that waged a decades-long civil war with the Sri Lankan government, which ended in their defeat last spring.

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