The new Tiger chief, Selvarasa Pathmanathan known as ‘KP,’ was arrested in a foreign country and brought to Colombo on Thursday for questioning.

According highly reliable sources here, he was picked up and flown down to the capital. However, there were no details of the circumstances under which he was taken into custody.

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.

Last week, KP claimed that the decision of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to give up its armed struggle and take recourse to “political and diplomatic moves” was taken by Velupillai Prabakaran along with other commanders at Mullivaikkal in Mullaithivu district days before Prabakaran’s death in Eelam War IV.

In a statement posted on his website, KP, supposedly operating out of South-East Asia and wanted by the Interpol, dwelt at length on his earlier statement about the LTTE’s decision to achieve Tamil Eelam.

The statement assumes significance as KP’s statement was contested by sections of the LTTE diaspora. The issue was apparently sorted out a few days ago and an announcement was made that KP is to carry forward Prabakaran’s movement for Tamil Eelam.

On Thursday, in his latest entry, KP said:

“To destabilise the Tamil national politics, weakening TNA is an important agenda for the Sinhala regime.

“Sinhala regime operates with a strategy of shrinking the political space for Tamil national politics. Based on this strategy, Tamil Media have been threatened not to engage with or write about Tamil national political debates and discussions.”

At the same time, KP said it was expected by “certain sections” that the LTTE had to work with the government, and not confront it for the benefit of the people who were kept in the “internment camps.”

“As our liberation movement has decided to silence the guns and follow a politico-diplomatic path, our cadres in the homeland would follow this decision. Since we do not have an open political space in the homeland to engage in political activities, our cadres cannot openly engage in any political activities at this point in time.”

KP charged the government with attempting to weaken the political organisations and parties that carried an ethnic identity. It was also not ready to allow the Tamil parties, which were working with the regime to carry their ethnic identity, he said. “It was evident during the local and provincial council elections in the East and was now becoming very clear in the local council elections in the North.”