Sri Lanka's defeated Tamil Tiger rebels today demanded an investigation into how their new leader was detained in Malaysia and flown home for questioning.

tamil tigers leader Selvarasa PathmanathanVisuvanathan Rudrakumaran, a senior Tiger, said Malaysia must release details on the "abduction" of Selvarasa Pathmanathan.

Officials in Colombo have declined to say how Pathmanathan was detained, but the Thai government said he was arrested in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday and transferred to Sri Lanka through Bangkok.

"If the government of Malaysia does not have any information on the matter, we demand an inquiry into the whole episode," Rudrakumaran said in an emailed statement.

However the police chief in Malaysia, which has a large Tamil minority, said he had no knowledge of such an arrest.

"I do not know about it," police chief Musa Hassan told AFP in Kuala Lumpur on Friday.

Trying to revive rebel group

Pathmanathan, who took over as head of the Tamil Tigers after its founding chief Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed in the final stages of fighting in May, was trying to revive the rebel group from overseas, the group has said.

A Sri Lankan defence ministry spokesman told reporters on Friday that Pathmanathan was being interrogated in Sri Lanka, but declined to explain how he had been detained.

Pathmanathan, 55, is wanted by Interpol on gun-running charges and by the Indian government in connection with the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi by a Tamil suicide bomber in 1991.

He was thought to have fled to Malaysia from Thailand two years ago.

Pathmanathan's whereabouts had been a closely guarded secret, but he was known to be in Thailand when the Tigers held peace talks with Sri Lankan representatives in 2002 and 2003.

Two years ago, he managed to escape a Thai security raid and was later believed to have shifted to Malaysia. He gave interviews to British media after the Tigers were crushed in May.

Lucrative fund-raisng network

Pathmanathan was believed to be in control of the LTTE's substantial overseas assets as well as a lucrative fund-raising network among expatriate Tamils.

Along with other foreign-based LTTE leaders, Pathmanathan announced plans in June to reorganise what remained of the rebel movement and to form a "trans-national government" with himself as its head.

"The struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam has reached a new state," he said at the time. "It is time now for us to move forward with our political vision towards our freedom."

- AFP