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During the Sri Lankan civil war, which lasted from 1983 to 2009, the armed separatist movement of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) systematically repressed Tamils considered as dissidents, both in Sri Lanka and in the diaspora. While the movement set up institutions of governance based on law and formal procedures, the repression, which targeted a broad category of individuals, was conducted outside of any institutional framework. It was representative of a model of repression based on the idea of purifying the political community from its elements presented as “internal enemies”. The repressive practices developed in this perspective by the LTTE took different forms depending on the territories in which they were deployed. In Sri Lanka, the LTTE were able to resort to ostentatious physical violence, abroad they had to adapt their practices to the constraints of an external legal order and therefore used a repressive repertoire mainly based on threat and stigmatization. Through the case of the LTTE, we can then analyze the political logics as well as the constraints associated with the constitution of a repertoire of repression by an armed group.