Tamil scribe gets 20 yrs jail for 'supporting terror'

Jayaprakash Sittampalam Tissainayagam, 45, who contributed to the local Sunday Times and also ran a website that focused on the country’s Tamil population, was found guilty of spreading ‘racial hatred’ and ‘supporting terrorism,’ an official at Colombo’s High Court said.
The scribe, detained for over 400 days now, was charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for an article he had written in the pro-LTTE magazine North Eastern Herald, that has since been closed.

Tissainayagam was arrested on March 7, 2008 and later charged under the anti-terrorism legislation. His family has decided to appeal against the ruling. The state-owned Daily News had claimed in May this year that Tissanayagam in an admissible confession had admitted his links with the LTTE.

“The confession was admitted in evidence at the court trial. There was material that showed his close links to Sivaram alias Tharaki, one time editor of the pro-LTTE website Tamilnet,” the newspaper said.

“Tissanayagam was associated with several opinion making publications of the LTTE organisation and was part of their propaganda outfit and was instrumental in securing funding for LTTE publication. He has also links with prominent personalities of the LTTE,” the paper claimed.

A political science graduate with a post-graduate degree in International Relations, Tissainayagam had worked as a columnist for The Sunday Times since 2007.