Speaking of appeasers...Terror suspect wins entrepreneurial award
University honours 'Waterloo Suresh'
COLIN FREEZE
From Friday's Globe and Mail
May 30, 2008 at 2:00 AM EDT
TORONTO — An MBA student accused of setting up an elaborate terrorism-support network has been awarded a $5,000 prize for his entrepreneurial acumen.
Two years ago, the arrest of the 26-year-old Canadian university student made headlines amid allegations he was known simply as “Waterloo Suresh” to Tamil Tiger figures overseas.
Suresh Sriskandarajah continues to be wanted in the United States to face charges that he set up enterprises to acquire $22,000 worth of sensitive warship-building software for the guerrillas.
He stands further accused of dispatching student smugglers from Canada to Sri Lanka, urging them to pack computer equipment under layers of “teddies and chocolates” to throw off detection.
Portions of a 2006 criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York. The allegations have not been proven in court.
Wilfrid Laurier University Awards of Distinction announcement
Despite the U.S. interest in Mr. Sriskandarajah, he has been freed on bail pending the outcome of his extradition hearings and now spends his time doing graduate work in Ontario.
He has been hailed “a model student” by officials at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo.
After joining the university's MBA program last year, he became the first and only winner of the university's “CIBC leaders of entrepreneurship award.”
When he won the award, Mr. Sriskandarajah was one of only 13 students to be recognized by corporate donors and university officials. The achievement flagged him as one of the most accomplished business students in a school known for business studies.
“The awards of distinction event recognizes Laurier's highest achieving students,” university president Max Blouw said in a statement at the time.
The ongoing MBA studies are distinct from the alleged activities Mr. Sriskandarajah is accused of engaging in while at the University of Waterloo, where he pursued an engineering degree and was involved in a Tamil student group.
After months of investigation, the United States asked Canadian police to arrest him in August, 2006, charging that he among 10 highly significant North American agents for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The LTTE, better known as the Tamil Tigers, is banned as a terrorist entity in Canada and the United States.
But even though support activities are increasingly criminalized, the Tigers rely on refugee communities outside Sri Lanka to contribute to their cause. These considerations play into 35-page criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York that names Mr. Sriskandarajah. The allegations have not been proven.
Most of the Canadian activities are alleged to have occurred before Canada's Conservative government blacklisted the LTTE as a terrorist group in the spring of 2006.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation accuses Mr. Sriskandarajah of trying to get thousands of dollars worth of sensitive U.K. software used for submarine and warship design, after coming up with an “elaborate scheme to make it appear the software was merely for a school project” at the University of Waterloo. A similar ruse was allegedly hatched in a plan to get night-vision goggles from a firm in British Columbia.
The U.S. complaint further accuses Mr. Sriskandarajah of laundering money in the United States and dispatching fellow Canadian students to Sri Lanka.
“You idiots already told way too much people ... Pack up properly!,” he allegedly wrote in one intercepted e-mail. Later, it said: “Tell them Waterloo Suresh sent you. I need to know that you arrived safely, more important all the things got there safely …”
Earlier this month, Mr. Sriskandarajah spoke to a local newspaper about the Laurier ceremony.
“Education is important to me and my supportive family. Therefore I decided to return to school to make the best use of my free time with an optimistic hope for the future.”
A spokesman for the school, Kevin Crowley, said in an interview Thursday that “the university recognizes the legal principle of the presumption of innocence.”
Students qualify for the financial awards by nominating themselves and then having their work reviewed by a university committee, he said, adding that the university picks its own award winners, and donors such as CIBC are not involved in the judging.
Mr. Crowley said that, like many people at the university, he has heard Mr. Sriskandarajah's praises sung. “What I've heard about him is he is a model student.”
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