What a contrast to the barbaric state...there these three would have been bailed into a white van
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The Associated Press
Monday, July 16, 2007
MELBOURNE,
Australia: Two men accused of raising funds for Sri Lanka`s Tamil Tiger separatists in Australia were granted bail Tuesday because the rebels are not officially listed as terrorist organization here.
A third man facing similar charges also was granted bail by a separate court.
Police arrested Aruran Vinayagamoorthy, 33, and Sivarajah Yathavan, 36, in May after a two-year investigation revealed the pair were allegedly raising money for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by telling donors the money was for victims of the 2004
Indian Ocean tsunami.
Their co-accused, Arumugam Rajeevan, 41, was arrested in Sydney earlier this month.
All three were charged with being members of a terrorist organization, providing support to a terrorist group and giving funds to a proscribed entity. They face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
But Victoria state
Supreme Court Judge Bernard Bongiorno released Vinayagamoorthy and Yathavan on 100,000 Australian dollars (US$87,400 ?63,400) bail Tuesday, saying the Australian government has not declared the Tamil Tiger rebels a terrorist group.
Attorney General Phillip Ruddock said he had asked government
lawyers to examine whether there are grounds to appeal the decision.
Under Australian laws, a group is considered a terrorist organization if it is formally listed by the federal government, or if a court makes a specific ruling.
The Tamil Tigers are not on the government`s current list of 19 banned organizations, although the group appears on terror blacklists in the European Union and the
United States.
Bongiorno said the suspects should be accorded the normal presumption of innocence.
`If that principle is abandoned or even modified for political expediency, that risks the whole foundation of our criminal justice system,` he told the court.
Vinayagamoorthy and Yathavan were ordered to appear in Melbourne Magistrates` Court on July 24.
Rajeevan, 41, was also granted A$100,000 (US$87,400 ?63,400) bail by Magistrate Ian Gray.
Outside the court, Rajeevan`s lawyer Rob Stary said justice had prevailed.
`I`m grateful that we`ve got an independent judiciary,` he said.
The Tigers began fighting for an independent homeland for Sri Lanka`s minority ethnic Tamils in
1983 following years of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. A 2002 cease-fire brought a brief respite, but fighting has increased steadily since 2005 and the conflict has killed more than 70,000 people.
Sri Lanka was among the hardest-hit of a dozen countries struck by the 2004 tsunami, triggered by a massive undersea earthquake on Dec. 26, 2004. The 230,000 people killed in the disaster included at least 35,000 Sri Lankans, many in the Tamil-dominated northeast.
