KUMARAN PADMANADAN ARRESTED BY CBI - ENB

Top Tiger arrested in Thailand

The LTTE's procurement and finance chief Kumaran Pathmanadan (KP) is reported to have been arrested in Thailand last night.
The suspect, who has obtained Thai citizenship, runs the global network of LTTE offices and its weapons procurement, logistics and money laundering operations.
He has been on Interpol's Most Wanted list for a number of years. He has also been implicated in several assassinations of political leaders.
Daily News LK 110907

LTTE Int'l arms network head arrested in Thailand - report
Tuesday, September 11, 2007, 13:56 GMT, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

Sept 11, Colombo: Reports say the head of LTTE's international financial network Kumaran Padmanadan or KP was arrested in Bangkok Monday evening. He was in charge of the global procurement network of the LTTE and listed as ‘most wanted militant' by Interpol.
However no details are available as an official confirmation regarding the arrest was yet to come. KP was in Thailand for a long period and acting as the head of the global network of LTTE offices and its weapons procurement, logistics and money laundering operations.
Jane's Defence Intelligence Review, a Defence magazine, recently revealed that the LTTE has two international wings, KP Department and Aiyanna Group engaged in global terrorist activities and earns $200-300 million per year through their fund raising activities and numerous illegal businesses.

Rajiv muder: Main accused held in Bangkok
Tuesday, September 11 2007 21:20(IST) New Delhi:

A key LTTE leader Kumaran Pathmanathan, main accused in the murder of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi has been arrested in Bangkok.
CBI has asked for immediate extradition of Kumaran Pathmanathan. KP, as he is often called, is the man behind the international weapons network of the LTTE and was operating from Bangkok as the outfit’s financier. He was detained a few hours ago and is being interrogated by the Thai police.
The three militants and Padmanathan were suspected to be involved in a LTTE gun-running network based in Thailand. Pathmanathan is reportedly a good friend of LTTE supremo Prabhakaran and had allegedly procured the explosives belt used to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi.
According to a Sri Lankan newspaper, the country may decide to extradite him but only after interrogating him.
He also had a number of aliases and has recently been the subject of a manhunt that stretched to Johannesburg, Rangoon, Singapore and Bangkok.

LTTE man linked to Rajiv's assassination nabbed
11 Sep 2007, 2255 hrs IST,PTI TIMES OF INDIA

Sixteen years after former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed, Kumaran Padmanathan, the LTTE leader who allegedly financed his assassination has been arrested by Interpol in Thailand for gun-running.
If extradited to India, the 52-year-old Padmanathan, also known as KP and Shanmugam Kumaran Tharmalingham, could prove to be a prized catch, with CBI sources claiming he would be able to unravel the conspiracy behind the assassination of Gandhi on May 21, 1991.
Acting swiftly on the report of his arrest in Bangkok yesterday, the CBI sent papers to Thai authorities, seeking confirmation about the development and asking for his extradition to India to face trial. This came a day after the Sri Lankan government approached authorities in Bangkok with a similar request.
The CBI is hopeful of securing Padmanathan's extradition as it had earlier approached 23 countries, including Thailand, for sharing information about the terrorist leader, the sources said.
Padmanathan, seen as a key LTTE leader in charge of operations to procure weapons for the group, was believed to be staying in Thailand and Cambodia and allegedly running an global gun-running network.
The CBI had been on the trail of the man with a number of aliases in places like Johannesburg, Yangon, Singapore and Bangkok. KP is believed to have bank accounts in Britain, Germany, Denmark, Greece and Australia as well as dozens of fake travel documents, the sources said. On April 6, 1955 at Myliyddy near Kankesanthurai in Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula, Padmanathan is said to be related to LTTE chief V Prabhakaran. He graduated in arts from Jaffna University and is unmarried.
Among his large number of fake passports, Padmanathan is believed to possess a Sri Lankan one, two Indian ones and a Sri Lankan identity card.
He has allegedly floated several shipping companies worldwide, including ones in Singapore, Malaysia and Panama, and some of his ships even fly the Honduran flag.
This fleet of ships was primarily used to smuggle large caches of arms and ammunition not only into northern Sri Lanka but also for international gun-running networks, sources said.
KP's name began figuring in the probe into Gandhi's killing after investigators found a revolver in the possession of Sivarasan, the mastermind behind the assassination, that was procurred by Padmanathan.
Padmanathan also figured in the Jain Commission's report as messages decoded by technical experts from the RAW hinted he was the "western" link in Gandhi's assassination.
The report discusses a batch of five messages exchanged between Prabhakaran, then stationed in Jaffna, and KP, who was moving from Paris to London to Cyprus at that time.
There was another message sent by Padmanathan to Kandaswamy, a LTTE operative in Chennai, asking him not to move out of Tamil Nadu since the group planned to assassinate "an important" Indian leader. The CBI sources said details were still trickling in about Padmanthan's arrest though initial information suggested he was nabbed after three LTTE militants were detained last month in Thailand's Ranong province while trying to buy guns and 45,000 rounds of ammunition.
The three militants and KP were suspected to be involved in a LTTE gun-running network based in Thailand, they said. Padmanathan has been declared one of the most wanted terrorists by Interpol as he is suspected to be a key person in LTTE's global network for procuring weapons and other equipment.
Jane's Defence Intelligence Review, the premier London- based defence magazine, recently reported that the LTTE had two international wings - KP Department and Aiyanna Group - that are engaged in global terrorist activities.
The CBI had been on Padmanathan's trail for over a decade. As part of its quest for the terrorist leader, a CBI team travelled to New Zealand in 2002 and questioned three Tamil nationals after securing permission from authorities in that country.
Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 by a LTTE suicide bomber at an election rally in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. In January 1998, 26 people were convicted for killing him.
A Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency, headed by the CBI, was set up to probe leads provided by the Jain Commission, which investigated the conspiracy behind the assassination.