INTERPOL has issued a red notice for the arrest of Perinpanayagam Sivaparan, alias Nediyavan, the Norway-based leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Police Spokesman SSP Ajith Rohana confirmed that INTERPOL has issued red notice on Nediyavan following a request made by the Sri Lanka Police while his profile and picture have been uploaded to the Interpol database.

Sri Lankan police earlier this month sought ‘red notices’, effectively an international arrest warrant, for 40 members of the LTTE, including for Sivaparan.

Sri Lankan authorities sped up the hunt for Nediyavan and Vinayagam, another LTTE faction leader based in Europe, after three key operatives of the banned outfit were killed in a major operation last week and were believed to be attempting a revival of the LTTE.      
      
Nediyavan and Vinayagam, who was already listed by the Interpol, had reportedly directed the action locally of three LTTE operatives - Gopi, Appan and Theviyan - who were killed in a shootout with the military.             

Theviyan, a former LTTE member, had returned to Sri Lanka from a foreign country, officials said.  

 Funds for regrouping of the LTTE had come to Sri Lanka through illegal money transferring systems.   These monies had been used to procure safe houses and vehicles to revive the LTTE locally, officials said.        

Last month, Sri Lanka gazetted the names of over 400 individuals who are said to be LTTE activists and contributors to the LTTE finances.

The Sri Lankan government had also sent out an alert demanding that Norway’s government arrest Perinpanayagam Sivaparan, who is based in Oslo, claiming that he is the new leader of the LTTE.

 Morten Høglund, the incoming State Secretary in Norway’s Foreign Ministry, told state broadcaster NRK that the foreign ministry was still evaluating how to respond to the approach.
 
Norway had briefly arrested Sivaparan in Oslo in 2011, interviewing  him over his role in financing operations for the LTTE among the Tamil diaspora in the Netherlands and then releasing him on conditional bail.
 
But while the five Dutch Tamils were in October 2011 jailed for six months by a court in The Hague for raising money for an organisation on the European Union’s banned list, Sivaparan has not been called back by Norwegian police.