Free Republic

Some thoughts on the political future of Sri Lanka, and how it can confront the threat of Islamic jihad.

The 32-year-old Norwegian man arrested for gunning down children on the holiday island of Utoya has been named locally as Anders Behring Breivik. Described as 6ft tall and blond, he is reported to have arrived on the island of Utoya and opened fire after beckoning several young people over in his native Norwegian tongue. Reports suggest he was also seen loitering around the site of the bomb blast in Oslo two hours before the island incident. More than 30 are believed to have been killed - seven in Oslo and between 25 to 30 on Utoya Island, 50 miles north...

The man allegedly behind Norway's devastating terror attacks, Anders Behring Breivik, is now under arrest. And he should count himself lucky for—if entirely undeserving of—a penal system in that country that is among the cushiest in the world. There's no capital punishment, and the longest jail term allowed is 21 years (a caveat: if a prisoner is deemed to still be a threat, his sentence can be extended in five-year blocks indefinitely, though it's highly unlikely, according to Norwegian officials). In Norway, rehabilitation is the guiding principle, not punishment—a somewhat difficult notion to swallow given the gravity and callousness of...

A Swedish professor suggested Israel was behind the bloody terror attacks committed by Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik this past July, stirring up controversy in the country. Research professor Ola Tunander of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) published an article in the Norwegian academic journal Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift in which he called to further examine Brevik's motives. According to Tunander, it is possible that some country was behind the terror attacks, hinting that Israel might be that country.

Anders Behring Breivik is a conservative Christian who enjoys classical music and the video game World of Warcraft. Breivik has been named by several Norwegian media outlets as the suspected shooter at a youth camp in Oslo, where 10 people were killed Friday and he may be linked to a bombing near the prime minister's residence that killed seven others. On his Facebook page, which appears to only have been started July 17, Breivik mostly posted music videos and said his interests include hunting and bodybuilding. Under education, Breivik wrote he studied independently, noting he has "approximately 14,500 hours of...

Morbid find suggests murder-obsessed gunman Adam Lanza plotted Newtown, Conn.'s Sandy Hook massacre for years Law enforcement reportedly discovers a sickeningly thorough 7-foot-long, 4-foot-wide spreadsheet with names, body counts and weapons from previous mass murders and even attempted killings. 'It sounded like a doctoral thesis, that was the quality of the research,' an anonymous law enforcement veteran said. It is three months since the killings in Newtown, since 20 children and six adults were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School less than two weeks before Christmas. And as bad as the story was, and will always be, it is...

The Tamil Tigers, one of the world's most violent terrorist outfits, are surrounded in northern Sri Lanka and about to be destroyed - but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and European self-styled peacemakers are getting in the way of victory.

The Tamil Tigers taught me to be a suicide bomber. Then I got my O-levels and decided I didn't want to die By NEIL ARMSTRONG 02nd May 2009 A former Tamil Tiger child soldier has given a shocking insight into the abuses perpetrated by separatist rebels, revealing how he was taken by Tamil fighters to a terror training camp at the age of 12, forced to undergo a gruelling daily 17-hour training regime and brainwashed into becoming a suicide bomber. In an extraordinary and unprecedented interview with Mail on Sunday special correspondent Edna Fernandes, Thayalan, now 17, admitted: ‘I was...

VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Canadian authorities unloaded a cramped cargo ship on Friday of nearly 500 Tamil asylum seekers from Sri Lanka whose arrival has sparked a national debate over the country's immigration and refugee laws. The sun was just rising on Pacific Coast when MV Sun Sea sailed under escort into a Canadian Navy base near Victoria, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island, and docked next to a makeshift camp set up to process the men, women and children on board. Officials said the ship was in good condition, but they would not describe the accommodations of the estimated 490 people...

Could there be a link between Norway-based LTTE operatives and Anders Behring Breivik, who bombed the Norwegian government headquarters in Oslo and wiped out a youth group on a nearby island on July 22 killing over 80 civilians? Responding to a query by The Island, informed sources said that the Norwegian could have had a link with the LTTEactivists in Norway. Breivik, in his 1,518 manifesto, which was released hours before he carried out the massacre, said had felt that Europe should follow the LTTE example of expelling the Muslims from Sri Lanka. He had interpreted the expulsion of Muslims...

People in Sri Lanka's war-ravaged north casted an overwhelming majority of their votes to the candidates of the major Tamil party at the local government elections held on Saturday, the Colombo Page reported on Sunday. Despite the massive campaign launched by the ruling party United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) in the Northern districts where elections were held for the first time after 29 years, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), formerly controlled by the Tamil Tiger rebels, won 18 out of 26 councils. An estimated 60 percent of the 2.5 million eligible voters turned out to cast their ballots throughout the...

BANGKOK: Two Pakistanis and a Thai woman arrested on suspicion of making fake passports for al Qaeda linked groups were part of criminal networks tied to “many terrorist attacks”, Thai police said Thursday. The arrests in Thailand formed part of an international operation to stamp out a huge cell that has been linked to the 2008 attacks in Mumbai and the Madrid train bombings in 2004. Pakistanis Muhammad Athar Butt, 39, and Zeeshan Ehsan Butt, 29, and Thai national Sirikanlaya Kijbumrung, 25, were arrested in Thailand on Tuesday as they attempted to flee into Laos. “They are suspected of being...

LTTE arms moved overland from China to NK for almost a decade by Shamindra Ferdinando Chinese arms consignments for the LTTE had been moved overland to North Korea across the China-North Korea border before being transferred to the terrorist group’s ‘floating’ warehouses on the high seas close to Indonesia, for about a decade, The Island learns. The LTTE had obtained its first Chinese arms consignment way back in 1994/1995 during the then People’s Alliance (PA) administration. On-going inquiries, well informed sources said, revealed that the China-North Korea overland transport of arms for the LTTE had operated for almost a decade...

OCTOBER 17, 2009 Rajaratnam Surfaced in U.S. Terrorism Probe By EVAN PEREZ and MATTHEW ROSENBERG WASHINGTON—The hedge-fund billionaire charged as part of a vast insider-trading case surfaced in an earlier, separate probe into U.S. fundraising by a Sri Lankan terrorist group, people familiar with the probe said. As part of that investigation, federal agents said they uncovered documents showing that Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, was among several wealthy Sri Lankans in the U.S. whose donations to a Maryland-based charity made their way to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, according to people familiar with the probe. Raj...

"Face -to-face with a human bomb A Sri Lankan journalist tries to find out why a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber would want to blow himself up" SNIPPET: "Earlier this year, I found myself seated face-to-face with a would-be suicide bomber, the most dreaded weapon in the arsenal of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) -- better known as the Tamil Tigers. Until their battlefield defeat earlier this year, the LTTE dreamed that their long campaign of terrorism would help them carve an independent Tamil homeland out of northern and eastern Sri Lanka. As we talked, I felt comfortable in...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka's defeated Tamil Tiger rebels have named a man accused of running a vast arms smuggling operation as their new leader, two months after government forces crushed the separatist movement. The new leader has pledged to remake the insurgents into a nonviolent separatist movement. Selvarasa Pathmanathan was the rebels' chief of international relations and allegedly ran an international weapons smuggling ring. The Sri Lankan government has appealed to foreign governments to find and arrest him. Pathmanathan "will lead us into the next steps of our freedom struggle according to the vision of our esteemed leader,"...

Bangkok, Thailand - Over two months after the bloody finale of Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war, a lingering row over civilian casualties continues to roil a fractured society. Sri Lankan authorities have insisted that their final military push against Tamil Tiger rebels didn't target hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped behind enemy lines. But aid workers, church officials, and government doctors reported that heavy shelling had caused mass casualties. A preliminary United Nations report estimated that 7,000 had died between January and May. On Wednesday, however, a group of doctors who had provided dramatic firsthand accounts of civilian suffering in...

The rebel group's international relations chief, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, said in a recorded message that the organisation would continue to pursue its aim of a separate Tamil state despite the rout of its army and death of its leadership. "The struggle of people of Tamil Eelam [the separate state the Tigers fought for] has reached a new state," he said. "It is time now for us to move forward with our political vision towards our freedom." A Sri Lankan protester sets fire to a Tamil Tiger flag AFP reported that Mr Pathmanathan, who is better known as K.P. and worked as...

Mi 24s role in eelam war IV emphasised by Shamindra Ferdinando The Hingurakgoda-based Mi 24 helicopter gunship squadron played a critical role in the recently concluded eelam war IV with nearly 400 missions in the Northern and Eastern theatres. Known as the No 09 squadron, it had caused devastating losses in coordinated attacks directed at fortified LTTE positions situated close to what Wing Commander Sampath Thuycontha, Commanding Officer of the squadron called forward location of own troops.’ In an interview with The Island, the veteran flyer said that despite having a range of weapons, including dedicated anti-aircraft guns the LTTE...

... Mr. Rajapaksa, elected in 2005, finally put an end to the "peace process" with Prabhakaran and focused on winning the military fight. In 2007, with the help of a Tiger splinter group, the government subdued the Eastern Province; the first elections were held there last year. The fighting then moved to the North. It has not been cheap or easy. Military spending in the 2009 budget is $1.7 billion, 5% of GDP and 20% of the government's budget. ...