A Canadian man has been indicted in Seattle for allegedly conspiring to support the Sri Lankan terrorist group the Tamil Tigers nearly six years ago.

The single-count indictment against Ramanan Mylvaganam, 34, is the result of a jurisdictional dispute between federal prosecutors in New York City’s Brooklyn borough and Mylvaganam’s attorneys. Mylvaganam is a former Bellevue resident.

Brooklyn prosecutors in 2006 had indicted Mylvaganam along with nine others in connection with an alleged plot to pay to import surface-to-air missiles and other military equipment to the Tamil Tigers. The charges also alleged the group was attempting to bribe U.S. officials to have the Tamil Tigers removed from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.

Mylvaganam’s attorneys had argued that federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York had no jurisdiction over Mylvaganam’s alleged crimes because he was living at the time in Bellevue, according to court papers.

“None of the alleged relevant acts, as evidenced by the government’s own evidence, took place in or even near the Eastern District of New York,” wrote Mylvaganam’s attorney, Jerry Fong, of Palo Alto, Calif. Fong did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

Mylvaganam was set to go to trial next month in Brooklyn, and prosecutors there will continue to handle his case as it proceeds in Seattle. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle will assist the Brooklyn prosecutor, said spokeswoman Emily Langlie. The indictment in Brooklyn will likely be dismissed.

Based on information in the New York indictment, Mylvaganam was a bit player in the conspiracy who was asked in March 2006 to help facilitate the purchase of nearly $22,000 of “submarine and warship design software” from a United Kingdom firm. The charges allege that he and two other men tried to cross from the United States into Canada with GPS and night-vision technology, which prosecutors allege had military applications that would have prohibited the equipment from going to the group.

Several others in the investigation already have pleaded guilty, and the Tamil Tigers, formerly known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, were defeated in May 2009 by the Sri Lankan government after a 25-year conflict.

The U.S. State Department placed the Tamil Tigers on its list of foreign terrorist organizations in 1997. The group was responsible for the assassination of India’s Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, according to news reports and court documents.

Mylvaganam was extradited last year to the United States from Canada, where he had been a graduate student in mathematics and computer engineering at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. – The Seattle Times