Legal counsel from Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA) presented a newspaper report naming the detained migrant in an LTTE funding effort, Canadian media reported yesterday.

“In his initial identity interview, [the man] denied being a member of the LTTE or travelling as a part of any LTTE delegation and initially denied traveling to any country outside of Sri Lanka,” said the legal counsel representing CBSA, Jennifer Friburg.

Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator Marc Tessler said “there may be an innocent explanation" for the migrant's actions, but his mention in the newspaper article and his initial denials to investigators about having traveled abroad provide sufficient reason to hold him on security grounds.

Prior to Wednesday's hearings, lawyers for the migrants have said they expected the government would start asking to detain some of the migrants on security grounds, especially since Public Safety Minister Vic Toews had stated publicly that the migrants included suspected terrorists who belong to the LTTE whose members are banned from entering Canada.

Although hearings for other migrants Wednesday remained largely devoted to providing updates on the status of verifying their identities, government lawyers cited other security concerns in prepared talking points before adjudicators.

They said that authorities had found numerous pieces of identification aboard the ship that had either been torn up or could not be linked to any individuals. The documents included a birth certificate, a death certificate, two ID cards, 300 pieces of various birth certificates and various pages from passports.

The discovery of these items "gives rise to the general concern that attempts have been made to conceal identity," said Parm Singh, one of the government lawyers.

The apparent fact that the migrants arrived in Canada as part of an organized human smuggling operation and the ongoing RCMP investigation gives rise to concerns about the identity documents being provided, government lawyers said.

One hearing was told that a national ID card that a migrant had submitted appeared authentic, but may have been altered because of the discovery of a "fibre disturbance" on the back of the card.

Government lawyers said they now have identity documents for 380 individuals and that documents for 290 of them have been sent to a lab for analysis.

Assessments for 40 individuals have been completed, though it remained unclear what the outcomes of those assessments were.
Even if documents are deemed to be authentic, they may still have to undergo further checks to ensure they weren't issued or obtained fraudulently, Singh said. In some cases, investigators have had to contact migrants' job, school, bank and health records to corroborate information.

Investigators have also had to reach out to agencies in the United Kingdom, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.

By late Wednesday afternoon, none of the migrants who appeared before an adjudicator had been granted release. They are allowed to have another hearing within 30 days.