Dutch court sentences five for backing LTTE

THE HAGUE (Reuters): A Dutch court convicted and sentenced five ethnic Tamil men on Friday to prison terms of up to six years on charges they helped finance the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) with millions of euros in their battle for an independent homeland in Sri Lanka.

Prosecutors had accused the five men, all of whom now have Dutch citizenship, of extorting money from the Sri Lankan Diaspora in the Netherlands by blackmail and under threat, while also engaging in money laundering and the spread of propaganda.

Sri Lankan Government forces crushed a decades-long Tamil Tiger insurgency in May 2009.