New Tamil Tiger leader 'arrested' in Thailand
The new leader of the Tamil Tiger separatist group defeated by the Sri Lankan military in May after a 25-year war, has been arrested in Thailand, Aljazeera news online quoted the military as saying.
Selvarajah Pathmanathan was wanted on two Interpol warrants and took charge of the remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) after its defeat in May, declaring that the group would take the political route to achieve its goal of a separate state for Tamils.
Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, a Sri Lankan military spokesman, said Pathmanathan had been arrested in the Thai capital Bangkok.
"That is all we know at the moment," he added.
Pathmanathan, better known as KP during his decades allegedly running the LTTE's arms and smuggling networks, was the first LTTE official to acknowledge the death of Tigers founder and leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran.
Prabhakaran, along with most of the Tigers' senior leaders, was killed in the closing days of Sri Lanka's offensive against the separatists in the country's northeast.
Pathmanathan is believed to have earned millions of dollars procuring weapons for the Tigers and running smuggling operations from bases across the region including Thailand, Cambodia and Burma.
As one of the most senior LTTE members remaining, he declared himself the secretary general of a revamped outfit which would try non-violent means to achieve its goal of a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils.
The announcement of Pathmanathan's capture comes as campaigning for Sri Lanka's first post-war election ended on Thursday.
Voting for local councillors is to take place on Saturday in Uva province and the towns of Jaffna and Vavuniya, on the outskirts of the area formerly controlled by the Tigers.
The government says campaigning has gone on without violence, unlike polls last year in the Eastern Province after the military drove the Tigers out of that area.
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