Home Minister snubs AG, to retain LTTE as a terrorist organisation

Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has snubbed Attorney-General Tommy Thomas' suggestion for the Home Ministry to review the list of gazetted terrorist organisations after discontinuing prosecution proceedings against 12 suspects linked to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a defunct separatist group in Sri Lanka.

"The Malaysian government listed the LTTE as a terrorist group since Nov 12, 2014.

"Based on the latest information from the authorities, I as the home minister feel there is a strong basis to retain the LTTE listing as a terrorist organisation.

"This group is believed to still espouse an ideology that can threaten public order and national security," he said in a statement today.

Muhyiddin said it is the authorities' responsibility to take measures to curb the group's activities and ideology.

"I would like to stress that the listing of LTTE as a terrorist organisation is under the purview of the home minister in accordance with the law.

"The attorney-general has no power under the law to interfere in the jurisdiction of the home minister," he said.

He said other countries, including India, Canada, US and UK also list the LTTE as a terrorist group.

In an 11-page statement, Thomas had said he was discontinuing prosecution as the common thread among all of the 12 LTTE-linked suspects was that they simply had photos of slain LTTE leaders, such as Velupillai Prabhakaran, in their phones or Facebook accounts.

He had also said that the home minister's order declaring an entity a terrorist group is not meant to be permanent and should be reviewed every six months to find out whether there are still reasonable grounds for such an order to continue.

The LTTE became defunct in 2009 after it was defeated by the Sri Lankan army.