SLN arrests fleeing Trinco Tamils in Mannar Sea

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 September 2006, 12:06 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) Wednesday night captured two fishing boats in Talaimannar Sea ferrying 31 Tamil civilians, all are residents of Trincomalee. The civilians and the four boatmen were produced in Mannar magistrate's court Friday morning by the Talaimannar Police.

SLN patrol crafts deployed to detect the fishing boats transporting Tamil civilians who flee to South India to seek refuge captured these vessels.

A.S.Johnthasan, Mannar acting Magistrate instructed the Court Registrar to hand over these civilians to civil authority for resettlement and ordered remand till October 5 for the four boatmen on a police report that they had been engaged in illegally transporting civilians to another country, legal sources said.