As for the ties that exist between the heroin trafficking rings and the Tamil terrorist movements, it should be noted that in numerous court investigations, information was uncovered and a documents captured suggesting that the drug traffickers and the Tamil separatists work hand in glove. In one notable case, in May 1986, during the arrest in the Paris region of the leaders of the "Tamil Coordinating Committee," who had become mixed up in drug trafficking, investigators uncovered a relationship with the "Liberation Tigers," one of the armed wings of the Tamil resistance movement to the Sinhalese regime."

Given the extent of the heroin trafficking in which they have engaged since 1982, and the cold-bloodedness with which they "manage" their supply routes and networks, the Tamil separatists are still the pioneers. But at the time, no one was really all that concerned. Organizations that supposedly were politically legitimate, fighting for the noblest of ideals, the liberation of a people, importing tons of heroin into Europe over a period of at least five years? Le Monde (July 31, 1985) simply noted that "this traffic sometimes has political overtones." As for the specialized international agencies, they quite simply did not wish to know. "INTERPOL or the United Nations Office at Vienna’s Division of Narcotic Drugs have no authority to delve into it (the “political” nature of drug trafficking, editor's note). For them, the Sri Lankan connection amounts to nothing more than a mere 1,500 or so kilos of heroin imported into Europe in 1984 alone (1) .

And yet as early as 1982, the customs services of countries situated along the periphery of Western Europe had started reporting seizures of Pakistani "brown sugar," in 3- to 10-kilo amounts, from Sri Lankan Tamils. These are always poor wretches, whom the press quickly dubbed "drug-trafficking kamikazes," or even the "skilled workers" of the drug trade. The invasion of these "coolies" reached the heart of Europe in 1983 and the following year, INTERPOL estimated that the Sri Lankan connection was responsible for importing 1.5 tons of heroin into Europe, an enormous amount for that time, when a seizure of 10 kilos of "powder" made the front pages. That year, 135 kilos of heroin were seized in Europe and 241 Ceylonese Tamils were arrested there, 89 of them in France.

As for the supply routes, the "kamikazes" always set out from Colombo, Madras, or Bombay. The heroin originally came from the "Golden Crescent," which explains the frequent stopovers in Karachi, Pakistan, by the couriers. An alternate route of the Eastern connection ran through the USSR and East Berlin, then West Berlin, and finally into France or the Netherlands. Another Eastern connection was via Syria, where the Tigers had friends among the Palestinian extremists, Tunisia, and finally southern Europe, France, or Italy. In the latter country, the Tamil separatists had valuable contacts in Rome, but also in Naples, Catania, and Palermo, where there are Tamil émigré communities. Another channel ran through the Canary Islands and Spain.

In 1985, 645 Jaffna Tamil smugglers were arrested in Europe, carrying 93 kilos of heroin, in West Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, Las Palmas in the Canary Islands), France (Paris, Marseilles), Great Britain, Greece, Italy (Rome, Naples, Palermo, Catania), Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Switzerland. Still others were arrested in Yugoslavia and Tunisia. Clearly, the invasion of Europe was massive and systematic.

September-October 1984: Dozens of Jaffna Tamils, living 10 or 15 to a ghetto apartment, were arrested in and around Rome holding significant amounts of heroin. One gruesome detail was that these illiterate smugglers, lacking any kind of identification documents, and able to scribble only "their" name and date of birth, often had had their tongues cut out--a foolproof method of ensuring their permanent silence.

October 1984: A Jaffna Tamil arrived at London's Heathrow Airport carrying 2.5 kilos of heroin. He confessed to selling drugs for the Tigers.

February 1985: Several Jaffna Tamils were arrested in Pierrefitte, Seine Saint-Denis, carrying five kilos of heroin.

March 1985: Interrogations from the previous fall led to the unravelling of one ring. In the greater Rome area, a network of Jaffna Tamils, headed by Selliah Pushpathillainathan (25 years old) and Mylvaganam Thevendraraja (28 years old), was arrested in possession of significant amounts of "brown sugar." In Naples, one Durairajah Prabhakaran, who was carrying three kilos of brown sugar, was picked-up. One of his accomplices, had seven kilos of the drug. In Catania, Sicily, a group of Jaffna Tamils had 15 kilos of heroin. These police raids made possible the seizure of a number of pieces of propaganda and internal documents of the LTTE, in addition to 40 kilos of heroin, several million deutsche marks, etc. On March 16, 1985, the Italian courts indicted these individuals and 33 of their cohorts, ages 20 to 30, for "criminal conspiracy to commit international drug trafficking," forgery, and use of falsified official documents, etc. In the March 19, 1985 issue of L'Espresso~ the Government Attorney of Rome, Luciano Infelisi, emphasized that "these individuals act out of political conviction...their profits were used to buy weapons." The investigation also revealed that these Tamils are in close contact with the Camorra (Naples) and the Cosa Nostra (Catania and Palermo). These organizations, bound by the code of silence called omerta, were no doubt highly impressed by the infallible silence of the smugglers with the cut-out tongues.

October 1985: The narcotics squad arrests some dozen Tamils in a house in Seine-et-Marne, in possession of 10 kilos of heroin. All told, 60 Sri Lankan Tamils were questioned, including 9 ring leaders. Most of them were "political refugees." That same month, the trial of eight Jaffna Tamils, including one woman, was held in Paris. They, too, had received "political" asylum. One of the defendants, a Mr. Rajaratnam, confessed that his group belonged to the LTTE, and that the trafficking was for the Tiger's benefit. The money brought in was sent to "Kumar," another Tiger living in Bombay, India.
Finally, in June 1986, a network of Jaffna Tamils was dismantled in Sarcelles. The ringleaders, Messrs. Chandrakhumarran and Vellutylul, were also leaders of the "Tamil Coordinating Committee in France," a front association in which the Tigers ran the show.
Since then, the Tamil narco-terrorists have forged ahead, albeit more cautiously. But as recently as 1993, OCTRIS [Central Office for Halting Illegal Narcotics Trafficking] and the Strasbourg SRPJ [Regional Office of the Judiciary Police] dismantled a Sri Lankan heroin-trafficking ring between France, the Netherlands, and Spain. Police surveillance revealed that seven Sri Lankan Tamils, led by J.E. Srilandjarah (who was working as a sales clerk in a Latin Quarter bookstore) had imported 8.2 kilos of Indian heroin into France between October 1992 and March 1993.

(1) Laurent Greilsamer, Le Monde, July 31, 1985