Kuhendrarajah admitted he had been deported from Canada in 2003 for violent crimes, reported the National Post.

At Australia has been trying to figure out how to handle similar migrant ships headed its way. At Australia's request, the Indonesian Navy intercepted a boatload of 255 Sri Lankans early last month and brought them to Merak, in Western Java. Australia is reluctant to admit the asylum seekers, and the discovery that a convicted Toronto gang member is on board may only make matters worse.

During his 16 years in Canada, Kuhendrarajah had participated in a campaign of alleged violence against Tamils as a member of AK Kannan, a Tamil street gang behind a rash of drive-by shootings in Toronto.

Named after its weapon of choice, the AK-47 assault rifle, AK Kannan was formed by Sri Lankan Tamils who came to Canada in the 1980s, according to an RCMP report. AK Kannan and a rival Tamil gang called the VVT, fought a violent turf war in Toronto in the 1990s.

AK Kannan was known for its heavy firepower. In January, 1998, Toronto police raided an AK Kannan weapons cache in a snow bank behind a Scarborough gas station and found a submachine gun and two sawed-off 12-gauge shotguns.

The Tamil gangs' wild tit-for-tat shootings turned parts of Toronto into a war zone, as gang members opened fire on each other from speeding cars. They shot up not only each other, but also innocent bystanders, one of them a 19-year-old Tamil university student mistakenly gunned down in a Scarborough doughnut shop in 1997.

Toronto police set up a Tamil Task Force but the gangs evaded prison by threatening witnesses and refusing to testify against each other. Meanwhile, Canada's major banks incurred losses "in the millions" as a result of financial frauds committed by the gangs, the task force wrote in a report.

Residents who lived near a Scarborough basement rented by AK Kannan complained to police "that these hoodlums were yelling, shouting, urinating, throwing garbage, walking across peoples' lawns and disrupting the peace in the neighborhood," the report said.

Kuhendrarajah lived in one such 'gang den'. Born in Sri Lanka in 1982, he arrived in Canada at age five to live with his grandparents, but by 12 he was skipping school and received counseling for his anger, reported the National Post.

The Children's Aid Society stepped in and he lived in foster homes until he was 16. He returned to his mother briefly (his father lived in the U.K.) but would come home drunk and high on marijuana. He ended up moving into a basement apartment with gang friends. Police knew the place as an AK Kannan hangout and visited it often to investigate shootings in the area or to arrest Kuhendrarajah's friends for such crimes as kidnapping or assault.

After VVT gangsters ran over an AK Kannan member named Kandipan Poopolasingam in a movie theatre parking lot, Kuhendrarajah approached a youth he thought was affiliated with the men responsible.

"If you talk to them, I am going to shoot you," Kuhendrarajah told him. He then raised his shirt to show the handle of his sawed-off .22. He was later convicted of illegal weapons possession and threatening. Immigration officials decided to deport him.

The Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) agreed he should be sent back to Sri Lanka. "He has had a longstanding problem with anger and disregarded authority figures at home and school," the IRB wrote, adding his links to Canada were "limited."

"I hung around with the wrong people before," Kuhendrarajah told an IRB hearing in March 2003. Asked why he had carried a weapon, he said, "I'm going to be honest with you, I wanted to be a bad boy."