Four Sri Lankan immigrants, including three Canadian citizens, have been convicted of aiding the terrorist organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers).

Nadarasa Yogarasa, 54, Sathajhan Sarachandran, 29, Sahilal Sabaratnam, 29, and Thiruthanikan Thanigasalam, 40, each pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn to conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization on January 26 and January 27, 2009.  The three latter men also pleaded guilty to attempting to purchase guided anti-aircraft missiles.

The men, who are all engineers, were arrested in August 2006 on Long Island after three of them engaged in negotiations with an undercover informant to purchase weapons. The men planned to buy $900,000 worth of surface-to-air missiles and AK-47s in order to smuggle the weapons to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, according to court documents.  Sarachandran, who is the former president of the Canadian Tamil Students' Association, told the undercover informant he was "taking direction" from the intelligence chief of the Tamil Tigers, Pottu Arman, according to the FBI.

Sarachandran, Sabaratnam and Thanigasalam face a sentence ranging from 25 years to life in prison. Yogarasa faces a maximum prison sentence of 30 years.

Three other Canadian men - Ramanan Mylvaganam and Piratheepan Nadarajah, of the Greater Toronto area, and Suresh Sriskandarajah of Waterloo – are fighting extradition to the U.S. in connection with the case.

The Tamil Tigers, a pioneer in the use of suicide bombings, was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. in 1997.