REFUGEE

Canada also considering seeking assistance from Sri Lankan government to determine whether men a security risk Canadian authorities are considering tracking down known Tamil Tigers – some outside the country – to help them distinguish potential terrorists from genuine refugees among the 76 Tamil men who arrived in a boat off Vancouver Island in October.

The government is also considering seeking assistance from the Sri Lankan government as it attempts to delve into the backgrounds of these men who claim to be refugees fleeing postwar Sri Lanka.

The revelations were made at a detention hearing Monday for one of the Tamil migrants, who remains behind bars in a Vancouver-area detention centre. Government lawyer Ron Yamauchi was making the case to keep the man in custody for security reasons.

The Immigration and Refugee Board has so far sided with the government's position that these mysterious men must stay in custody because there is reasonable grounds to believe they might be inadmissible to Canada on security grounds. But the men can't be held in detention indefinitely. At some point, the government must seek to have them sent home or allow them to be released while their refugee claims proceed.

Some security experts have suggested that the migrant ship was filled with Tamil Tigers, the violent separatist group that waged a decades-long civil war with the Sri Lankan government, which ended in their defeat last spring.

But after more than a month of interviews and investigation, the government has not provided proof that the migrants were members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Yesterday, Mr. Yamauchi repeated the government's assertion that it suspects there were Tigers aboard the ship and noted that authorities here plan to consult both Tigers and Sri Lankan government officials in their bid to identify the men.

Mr. Yamauchi conceded the plans are “delicate” and fraught with “complexities.”

A lawyer for many of the Tamil boat people said enlisting the help of Tamil Tigers to identify the men is tricky because he doubted the reliability of Tiger informants.

Lawyer Lorne Waldman also dismissed the notion of asking the Sri Lankan government for help.

A Sri Lankan diplomat in Toronto has said he doesn't believe Tamils are threatened in Sri Lanka and they don't need refuge in Canada.

The government's proposed methods to identify the migrant men underscore the difficulty of determining if the men are terrorists on the run.

Those complexities were evident at a hearing Monday for another young Tamil seeking release. (The migrants can't be identified because of a publication ban.)

Mr. Yamauchi said the man was involved in fundraising for the Tigers in Sri Lanka. But he also noted that the man told him that his business organization in Sri Lanka forced all members to fundraise for the Tigers.

Earlier, Mr. Waldman urged the board to disregard the advice of a Singapore-based terrorism expert who claims that Tamil Tigers were aboard the ship that arrived off the Canadian coast on Oct. 17.

Mr. Waldman said Rohan Gunaratna, the government's chief adviser on the Tamil boat people, is biased against Tamils, too cozy with the Sri Lankan government and can't be trusted because he won't reveal his sources.

“Mr. Gunaratna is not an objective expert as he lacks both independence and impartiality,” Mr. Waldman told the IRB hearing via teleconference.

Mr. Gunaratna's credibility could have an impact on whether the migrant men, all of whom have made refugee bids to stay in Canada, will be released in the near future.

Among other things, Mr. Gunaratna has advised the Canadian government that the ship the migrants arrived on was a former Tiger gun-running ship, that at least two of the migrants are Tigers and that the LTTE planned to set up a new base of operations in Canada after its defeat in the civil war.

The migrants who arrived off Canada's West Coast last October are the first wave of those Tigers to move to Canada, Mr. Gunaratna has said.

The detention cases have been held up for weeks as lawyers for the migrants demanded to cross-examine Mr. Gunaratna. He was grilled at a hearing last month by lawyers for the migrants.

An immigration and refugee adjudicator will rule next Monday on how much weight she will give to Mr. Gunaratna's opinions.