Age learns truth about its sweet boat person In May, she was the poster girl for The Age's campaign for more "compassion" to boat people: IT SHOULD have been cause for unbridled joy. Having fled the trauma and tragedy of life in Sri Lanka, Ranjini had been found to be a refugee, married the man who would be a father to her two boys and begun a new life in suburban Melbourne. Now she was pregnant. Instead, confirmation of the pregnancy last Saturday only compounded her feeling of complete and utter despair. It came two days after Ranjini was told, without warning, that she had been deemed a threat to Australia's national security and whisked away with her sons to the Villawood detention centre in Sydney... ""I am in total shock,"" says Nathalie Klapper, who struck up a friendship with Ranjini... ""There is nothing subversive or political or nasty about Ranjini whatsoever,"" Klapper says. ""She's the most positive, upbeat, strong person despite all the horrors that she has been through..."" ""I can't speak highly enough of her,"" says Jenny Sims, a minister at the Chermside-Kedron Community Church in Brisbane... ""She's a loving, caring, gentle person who has been through a lot of trauma."..." Ranjini, 33, is the 47th asylum seeker in the current caseload to receive a negative ASIO assessment... Because she does not know what she is accused of doing, or saying, she cannot defend herself. Today, however, The Age learns that maybe ASIO isn't so stupid - and its poster girl not so innocent: Tamil refugee Ranjini admitted to having trained child soldiers during Sri Lanka's bloody civil war in a secret ASIO report used to justify her indefinite detention in Australia. She also told immigration officials she rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the separatist Tamil Tigers and fought two battles in the late 1990s against Sri Lankan forces... Ranjini insists she has given up the cause of Tamil independence in Sri Lanka and wants to focus on raising her children - including a boy born in January while in detention. But a review of the case by retired federal court judge Margaret Stone, delivered in July but not made public until now, was scathing, finding Ranjini's claims ""self-serving and implausible"..." [Ranjini ] told officials her then husband - known as ""Akbar"," killed in a 2006 battle - was a bodyguard for feared Tigers commander Prabhakaran and led fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades. She admitted to using machineguns and AK-47s, being trained in karate, but not in the use of bombs or explosives. An extensive investigation of her refugee claims found she was ""heavily indoctrinated"" into the Tigers... Thanks to reader Steve.