It’s always shocking how the people who get involved in terrorism can sometimes not be the sort that you would think of - they don’t fit the stereotyped of disturbed or agitated individuals.
Sathajhan Sarachandran’s friends describe him as being the last person who’d get involved in this stuff. He’s a computer science graduate from Toronto, former leader of the Canadian Tamil Students Association; when the tsunami hit Sri Lanka last year he was a volunteer to go and help out.
Suresh Sriskandarajah is even more extraordinary. An enginering student at one of Canada’s best schools, he worked at Microsoft and at RIM, two of the world’s leading companies. He loves snowboarding, skydiving, mountain climbing and listening to hip hop, reggae and Tamil pop, and on his personal website he wrote of his dream of starting his own technology company, and wrote that he wanted to marry a “loving girl and have two cute kids; a girl and then a boy; )” and then live a peaceful life.
As normal, nice and caring people as anyone who knew them could imagine. And yet these two both ended influenced by terrorists and participating in their schemes…
A year and a half ago, Sathajhan Sarachandran and Suresh Sriskandarajah travelled to Sri Lanka with a delegation of 26 Ontario students to help victims of the Asian tsunami.
Today, they stand accused of supporting terrorist activities.
The young men, prominent voices in Canada’s Tamil community, are among four Canadians and five Americans arrested in recent days on accusations that they conspired to buy weapons on behalf of the Tamil Tigers, following a joint RCMP-FBI investigation.
A slim, clean-cut Sriskandarajah, 26, appeared briefly in a Kitchener courtroom yesterday, backed by half a dozen supporters and looking relaxed after his Monday night arrest in Toronto on a provisional warrant. He faces possible extradition to the United States, where he’s charged with conspiring with others in New York to provide material support and resources to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, commonly known as the Tamil Tigers.
Among the three Canadians arrested in Long Island, N.Y., on Saturday were Sarachandran and Sahilal Sabaratnam, 27, a former spokesman for the Canadian Tamil Congress.
New York authorities allege the Canadians had tried to buy Russian-made SA-18 surface-to-air missiles, missile launchers, AK-47s and other weapons to be used by the Tigers in the rapidly escalating conflict against the Sri Lankan military. The man they negotiated with was reportedly working undercover for U.S. authorities.
The charges have shocked many in Canada’s Tamil community, at 200,000 one of the largest populations of Tamils outside Sri Lanka.
Four men, including Thiruthanikan Thanigasalam, Sarachandran and Sabaratnam arrived at the U.S. border at Niagara last Friday, telling border officials that they were going to attend a bachelor party. The fourth man was turned back because officials learned of his criminal record, and he took a taxi home.
Court documents reveal that the three men described the fourth as a “scientist” and an expert in technical issues.
An FBI affidavit says Sarachandran told agents he was taking direction from Pottu Amman, the man alleged to have masterminded the 1991 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and who reportedly leads the Tigers’ intelligence and operations wing.
In April Canada formally listed the Tamil Tigers — who are fighting Sri Lanka’s military to establish a separate homeland — as a terrorist group. The U.S. designated the Tigers as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
The arrests took Sarachandran’s friends by surprise. The Toronto university student is the last person anyone would identify as a terrorist, said a friend of five years, who asked not to be named.
“I am really shocked,” the friend said. “He is not that kind of person. He’s not a terrorist.”
Known as “Satha” to friends, the 27-year-old is an active member of the community and former president of the Canadian Tamil Students Association. After the tsunami struck Sri Lanka on Boxing Day 2004, Sarachandran visited the country’s north and east, telling a local radio station that Canadian Tamils were "completely devastated by the disaster.
“I, along with other students, am eagerly awaiting international support, which has not been forthcoming to the areas we have seen,” he said.
Sarachandran’s friends describe him as an “easygoing, charming guy” who likes joking around and participating in Tamil community events. “He might have got trapped into something he had no idea about,” one said.
Like Sarachandran, Sriskandarajah was deeply attached to his homeland. He was born in northern Sri Lanka and moved to Canada in 1989. On his personal website filled with photographs of Sri Lanka, he recounts a childhood that seems almost idyllic. “During my childhood, I loved going to school and hanging around with my friends. After school, I usually do some biking and stealing mangoes with my buddies.”
Ambitious and athletic, Sriskandarajah won scholarships from Canada Trust and the University of Waterloo engineering program. According to his website, he also loves snowboarding, skydiving, mountain climbing and listening to hip hop, reggae and Tamil pop.
The website says he worked for Research in Motion for three months in the winter of 2004, and Microsoft in the winter of 2005.
Sriskandarajah dreamed of earning an engineering degree and working as a program manager before starting his own technology firm. Then, he wrote, he hoped to marry a “loving girl and have two cute kids; a girl and then a boy;) Hopefully, have a peaceful life from there on.”
From January to April 2004, he made his first visit to Sri Lanka in 15 years, as founder and volunteer with Vanni Innovation Group, which teaches Sri Lankan students skills in technology, business and English.
Sriskandarajah returned later that year to see the ravages of the tsunami.
“The lack of aid in the northeast bothered me to a great extent,” he wrote for a Tamil website. “I did not see much coming from outside during the two weeks I was there. The aid received from other countries and international non-governmental organizations was being redirected to other regions by the government of Sri Lanka, due to the political tension with the Tamil people in the northeast.”
He revisited an orphanage where he spent time on his first trip and was devastated to find that 140 of the 170 children he had played, sung and eaten with were now dead.
“I saw pieces of children’s clothing hanging on trees, and broken toys on the ground. Hearing the stories of how some of the dead bodies of these children were found stuck to trees and under bridges nearly killed me.”