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Swiss SC upholds lower courts verdict that LTTE are not a terror or criminal org

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  • Swiss SC upholds lower courts verdict that LTTE are not a terror or criminal org

    Tamil Tigers acquitted in Switzerland | SwissInfo | Dec 03 2019

    The lower court ruled a year back, Swiss prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court and lost !!

    This is such a mind boggling verdict. How could it be said that an org that served as inspiration to Al Qaida by virtue of its lethality, killed TWO heads of Govt, in India (ex-PM Rajiv Gandhi in '91) & Sri Lanka (Serving President Premadasa in '93) in the space of two years be termed not a terror org.

    Judgement in German here

    It's just two pages long and the news article above pretty much covers it.

    In its indictment, the OAG had accused the people of violating the Swiss Penal Code by raising funds for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) between 1999 and 2009. After its nine-year investigation, the OAG suspected the accused of financially supporting the World Tamil Coordinating Committee (WTCC).

    But in June 2018 the Federal Criminal Court found that the hierarchical link between the LTTE and WTCC could not be sufficiently established. The judges also felt there was not enough proof to consider the LTTE a criminal group.

    According to the court, those who procured money for the LTTE in Switzerland at that time could not assume that they would later violate the law. Even if it had carried out terrorist attacks, the LTTE’s primary objective was to be recognised as an independent ethnic community.
    Last edited by Double Edge; 09 Dec 19,, 18:37.

  • #2
    Having looked at the actual Swiss legalese...
    • the federal court decided that LTTE does commit terrorist acts, overturning the lower court statement on that
    • however, committing terrorist acts does not make an organization automatically a criminal organization in the sense of Art. 260ter of the Swiss Criminal Code.
    • having surveyed Swiss federal agencies, LTTE was not considered a criminal organization in the sense of Art. 260ter of the Swiss Criminal Code at the time concerned.


    Article 260ter is a very generic criminal article punishing support for criminal organizations; it was originally written to combat mafia, and later "re-applied" to terrorist organizations. However it is not quite usable as a "broadband" means against organizations committing terrorist acts, since it states that the "purpose" (not the main purpose, or one purpose, but the entire purpose) of the organization has to be either to commit violent capital crimes or to procure financial gain.

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