The guilty pleas of the defendants come amid numerous protests staged by the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora in Western countries against the Sri Lankan government.

June 10, Colombo: Four LTTE Tigers pled guilty on Tuesday in the federal court of New York for conspiring to provide material support to the LTTE, a banned terrorist organization in the United States.

Defendants Karunakaran Kandasamy, Pratheepan Thavaraja, Murugesu Vinayagamoorthy, and Vijayshanthar Patpanathan pled guilty to, among other crimes, conspiring to provide material support to the LTTE before the United States District Judge Raymond J. Dearie.

Kandasamy, the director of the American branch of the LTTE and Pratheepan, a senior procurement agent for the terrorist outfit face a 20-year maximum statutory sentence. Vinayagamoorthy and Patpanathan face a 15-year maximum statutory sentence.

The guilty pleas of the defendants come amid numerous protests staged by the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora in Western countries against the Sri Lankan government.

Kandasamy has directed the LTTE’s various activities in the United States, including raising millions of dollars for the LTTE and laundering it through the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) the Courts stated.

According to the Federal Courts of New York defendant Pratheepan Thavaraja, was responsible for globally procuring arms worth $20 million for the LTTE which included Anti Aircraft Guns, grenade launchers, 50 tons of C4 explosive, five tons of "Phlegmatized RDX" and tons of other explosives, improvised explosive devices, missiles, machine guns, artillery, radar, and other equipment.

Federal prosecutors say, Pratheepan and defendant Murugesu Vinayagamoorthy were also involved in the attempted bribery of purported U.S. State Department officials to remove the LTTE from the list of designated foreign terrorist organizations.

Also, Vinayagamoorthy has participated in laundering LTTE money through a Swiss bank account to covertly fund a U.S. Congressman’s trip to LTTE-controlled territory in Sri Lanka, Court release stated.

New York Times, citing a 2006 Chicago Tribune report said the Congressman is the Illinois Democrat, Danny K. Davis, who turned down the offer for the vacated Senate seat of President Obama.

The State Department designated the Tamil Tigers as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. Sri Lanka defeated the LTTE last month in a well-coordinated military offensive that was conducted after abrogating a defunct ceasefire.