He made few public appearances, but delivered a “Heroes’ Week” speech each November commemorating dead Tamil fighters.
“We will continue with our struggle until the alien Sinhala occupation of our land is evicted,” he vowed in his final address last year.
Prabhakaran’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had their own army, navy and air force, built up by an international fundraising network and the use of sanctions-busting smugglers on ships and speedboats.