Karuna arrested in UK

Tamil Tigers breakaway chief arrested in Britain
LONDON (AFP) — Colonel Karuna, the leader of a breakaway faction of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers rebel group, has been arrested in Britain and is being held in immigration detention, the interior ministry said Friday.
Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, better known as Colonel Karuna, was arrested in an operation carried out by Britain's immigration authority and the London police, the Home Office said.
Karuna, the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)'s former eastern commander, led an unprecedented split from the group in March 2004 and is said to be collaborating with government forces against the main guerrilla outfit.
"Karuna Amman has been arrested following a joint operation between the Border and Immigration Agency and the Metropolitan Police," the Home Office said in a statement to AFP.
"He is now being held in immigration detention it would not be appropriate to comment further."
London's Metropolitan Police and the British high commission (embassy) in Colombo have both declined comment.
Recent reports in the Sri Lankan media say he had been smuggled off the island due to threats to his life from LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran.
Sri Lanka struck a major blow against the Tamil Tigers on Friday, killing the rebels' political chief and top peace negotiator in a surgical air strike carried out by the military.
The Tiger proxies in the Sri Lankan parliament, the Tamil National Alliance, said the killing marked the end of the faltering peace process.
The Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1972 for autonomy in the island's north and east in a conflict that has killed more than 60,000 people.
A 2002 truce brokered by Norway began to unravel in December 2005, and since then more than 5,400 people have killed and many more displaced as fighting in Asia's longest-running civil war has progressively escalated.

Sri Lankan rebel breakaway leader held in UK
Fri Nov 2, 2007 6:00pm
LONDON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - British police and immigration officials have arrested a breakaway leader from Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels, the government said on Friday.
Karuna Amman was arrested following a joint operation between Britain's new Border and Immigration Agency and London police, a Home Office (interior ministry) statement said.
"He is now being held in immigration detention (and) it would not be appropriate to comment further," it said.
The Home Office gave no details of where or when Karuna was arrested or what would happen to him.
Karuna, whose real name is Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, is a former eastern commander of the Tamil Tigers.
Once a confidant of reclusive rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, Karuna split from the main movement in 2004, taking an estimated 6,000 fighters with him.
A swift Tiger offensive recaptured his territory and he was widely said to have fled into government areas.
Diplomats and analysts say Sri Lanka was using Karuna as part of its fight against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) or Tamil Tigers, who aim to carve out an independent homeland for the island's Tamil minority.
A 2002 ceasefire collapsed last year, with the island now back in a two decade long conflict that has killed some 70,000 people and to which analysts see no end in sight.
Sri Lanka's government denies backing Karuna's fighters who have attacked the mainstream LTTE and were accused by U.N. children's fund UNICEF of abducting children to fight.
Some Sri Lankan politicians have begun to talk up Karuna and his movement the Tamileela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) as an alternative political counterweight to the Tigers.
But rights groups accuse them of a string of abuses and extortion and in recent months there have been repeated reports of a split.
The Tamil Tiger's political wing leader and the international face of the group, S.P. Thamilselvan, was killed in a Sri Lankan air force bombing raid early on Friday, in what analysts warned was a body-blow to any hope of ending the conflict soon.

Britain confirms Karuna Arrest
The British Home office today confirmed that Karuna was arrested in London and is being held at the Metropolitan police. In an email to the Daily Mirror the press officer of the Home Office Zoe Paxton said Amman was arrested following a joint operation between the BIA and Metropolitan Police but refused to comment further.
"Karuna Amman has been arrested following a joint operation between the BIA and Metropolitan Police. He is now being held in immigration detention it would not be appropriate to comment further." Zoe Paxton told the Daily Mirror
The Daily Mirror has learnt that Amman was arrested with a forged passport and is likely to be deported to Colombo.