CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

EVENING STANDARD CHARGES THAT LONDON MAYOR KEN LIVINGSTON IS COLLOBORATING WITH TERRORIST GROUPS INCLUDING THE LTTE

By Walter Jayawardhana

The city of London’s provincial newspaper, The Evening Standard which is exposing in a series of news items the sitting mayor of London Ken Livingston as a friend of varied terrorist organizations on Tuesday depicted him as a friend of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam terrorist group.

“Livingstone has addressed a meeting co-organised by a "front" for a banned terror organisation - even though he had been warned at the highest diplomatic levels about the group's alleged terrorist links. The Mayor sought backing from the British Tamil Forum at the meeting in Harrow on Saturday, according to its spokesman”, the newspaper said in a lead story in one of its inner pages with a photo of Prabhakaran.

The labour Party Mayor Ken Livingston who is facing a neck to neck mayoral race with the Conservative Party candidate Boris Johnson is opposed by the Evening Standard newspaper.
The newspaper said the Labour Party Mayor has taken part in this meeting even after he had been informed about the true nature of the British Tamil Forum, which is alleged to be a front organization of the LTTE.

The newspaper alleged , “At a previous meeting organised by the British Tamil Forum, at the Excel Centre, Docklands, on 27 November, a video message from the Tamil Tigers' leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, praising suicide bombing was played and a collection was taken for Tamil Tiger "martyrs". The meeting is the subject of a police anti-terror investigation.”

The Evening Standard said further in its report, “The Tamil Tigers, officially known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, pioneered suicide bombing.

“They have been responsible for numerous attacks in Sri Lanka, including a military assault on the country's main airport in 2001 which caught almost 50 British tourists in the crossfire.

“Although indiscriminate violence has also been carried out by the Sri Lankan government, Tamil Tiger suicide attacks alone have killed around 1,600 people, including the Sri Lankan president and the Indian prime minister.

“Suren Surendiran, a spokesman for the British Tamil Forum, said that last weekend's meeting was co-organised by the forum and a local Tamil Labour councillor, Thaya Iddaikadar.

"The forum was involved (in the organisation of the meeting)," he said. "About 20 per cent of the people at the meeting were from the British Tamil Forum and the rest were local Tamils."
‘Mr Surendiran said the Mayor was asked a question about the Sri Lankan High Commission's claims that the forum was a Tamil Tiger front. "He said the Metropolitan Police came under him and where there was a legitimate request for a legitimate event his office would always be supportive," Mr Surendiran said.

“The Mayor also gave the forum his "personal commitment" that he would support its candlelit vigil in Trafalgar Square this summer to mark the 25th anniversary of "Black July," a massacre of Tamil civilians triggered by a Tamil Tiger attack on a military convoy.

“About 1,000 Tamils were killed in this bloodshed, which is generally seen as the trigger for Sri Lanka's civil war. Mr Surendiran said the forum "shares the same aspirations as the Tamil Tigers, but we do not subscribe to their methodology". Mr Livingstone's campaign has been dogged by allegations that he is too closely linked to organisations which sympathise with terrorists.

“Yesterday, the Standard told how he had appointed a former member of a banned Sikh terrorist organisation, Dabinderjit Singh, to the board of TfL.

“Last week it emerged that one of Mr Livingstone's leading Muslim supporters is closely connected to the Islamic militant group Hamas.”

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