London, May 6 (IANS) Arunachalam Chrishanthakumar, a London-based leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was arrested by the British police Tuesday for the second time in less than a year for alleged fund-raising activities and procurement of war material. Also known as A.C. Shanthan, the 51-year-old man was first arrested in June 2007 under Britain’s Terrorism Act before being released on bail in November.

The police re-arrested him in Swindon, Wiltshire, in a pre-dawn raid Tuesday.

“Shanthan is the de-facto leader of the LTTE in the UK and has built up the outfit over 20 years in London,” said Walter Jayawardhana, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan High Commission in London.

Shanthan is also thought to have been close to the late LTTE ideologue Anton Balasingham, and accompanied him for peace talks in Geneva in 2006.

The LTTE is a banned outfit under British law.