Italian Police have arrested 33 suspected cadres of LTTE in pre-dawn raids across the country yesterday.

Police in Naples said the suspects were picked up in 10 cities including Rome, Genoa, Bologna, Naples and Palermo at the end of a two-year investigation. Two more were being sought in Naples.

Police believe the suspects, all Sri Lankan citizens, extorted money from their fellow nationals in the various cities and sent it home to finance the LTTE.

“They had formed an organization that was arranging financial support by collecting a tax, or an extortion payment, from Sri Lankans living here,” said Palermo prosecutor Antonio Ingroia. Investigators will determine if they can also charge the collectors for extortion.

Police said they have been investigating reports for the past two years that these Sri Lankans had been extorting money from fellow nationals working in Italy and sending it to Sri Lanka to finance the LTTE.

Three months ago the Italian authorities closed down an illegal LTTE propaganda TV channel operating from Italian territory.

The Neapolitan police team has also discovered a kind of intelligence service in the LTTE called TIG, which controls people from Sri Lanka of the Tamil ethnic group resident in Italy, holding detailed files and photos, both of supporters and non-supporters of the organisation.

Reports on Italian TV speculated that the annual amount extorted from expatriate Tamils in Italy was around four million euros (6.2 million dollars).

Though Italian Police also looking for another four key LTTE suspects, who are at present on the run in Europe. These suspects are said to be suicide cadres who participated in the Pongu Tamil ceremony held on June16, in Milan.

Furthermore, it is learnt that more arrests are expected in Italy and in elsewhere, as European countries are on the alert over the terrorist activities of the LTTE in Europe and back in Sri Lanka.