The city of London=92s 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, a
terrorist group.
=93Livingstone has addressed a meeting co-organised by a "front" for a
banned terror organization - 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=94, the newspaper said
in a lead story in one of its inner pages with a photo of
Prabhakaran.Outlaw: Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabakaran
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 Labor 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 , =93At a previous meeting organized 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.=94
The Evening Standard said further in its re****t, =93The Tamil Tigers,
officially known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, pioneered
suicide bombing.
=93They have been responsible for numerous attacks in Sri Lanka,
including a military assault on the country's main air****t in 2001
which caught almost 50 British tourists in the crossfire.
=93Although 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.
=93Suren 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."
=91Mr 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 sup****tive," Mr Surendiran said.
=93The Mayor also gave the forum his "personal commitment" that he would
sup****t 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.
=93About 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 organizations
which sympathize with terrorists.
=93Yesterday, the Evening Standard told how he had appointed a former
member of a banned Sikh terrorist organization, Dabinderjit Singh, to
the board of TfL.
=93Last week it emerged that one of Mr Livingstone's leading Muslim
sup****ters is closely connected to the Islamic militant group Hamas.=94
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