The Commander of the Sun Sea carrying asylum seekers to Canada, is revealed to have close contact with local financiers of the LTTE, reported the Malay Mail.

Known as Capt. Vinod, he is said to have studied at the Malaysian Maritime Academy in Malacca.

From the 1990s to 2009, Vinod had worked with another LTTE cadre, Capt. Kamalraj Kandasamy, alias Capt. Kamal, to ship several tons of arms, ammunition and explosives from North Korea to Sri Lanka for the outlawed group to wage and sustain its terrorist campaign, Singapore-based terrorism expert Prof. Rohan Gunaratna told the Malay Mail.

Gunaratna added that Kamal skippered the first Tamil refugee ship, Ocean Lady, which arrived in Canada last October.

He added that while Kamal captained Ocean Lady, Vinod stayed in Thailand to buy the Sun Sea from a Thai company, on behalf of the LTTE, to take advantage of Canada's weak response to the Ocean Lady.

The Sri Lankan High Commissioner in Ottawa, Chitranganee Wagiswara, told Postmedia News that Vinod was the Sun