Lankan refugee a Tiger agent

Sources contacted by The Australian have confirmed the woman worked as a legal officer in the LTTE-run courts. She co-operated with Australian security officials and did not seek to hide her background.

She is believed to be preparing a legal challenge against her adverse security assessment, which prohibits her and her husband from gaining visas.

Her mother and brother passed their security checks and are now living in Sydney.

Despite the family's negative assessments, all have been deemed refugees by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The ruling poses a dilemma for the government, which cannot lawfully repatriate refugees to their country of origin if they are under threat of being harmed.

According to the woman's brother, the family was separated in the mid-1990s due to Sri Lanka's civil war.

He denied his sister was a threat to national security, despite her association with the Tamil Tigers, a declared terrorist group in most Western countries, although not in Australia.

"Maybe she worked in that court, but I don't think she was part of the LTTE," he said.

Before their defeat by the Sri Lankan government forces, the Tigers ran a civil infrastructure in the areas they controlled, effectively running a state within a state. "They had courts, they had everything there, they had separate police, military, courts," the brother said.

He said that anyone who worked in the LTTE-controlled areas had no choice but to work with, or for, the LTTE command.

It is not clear if the woman's legal background with the Tigers was the sole basis for her negative security assessment.