Prabhakaran: LTTE's brain, heart, god and soul

COLOMBO: Velupillai Prabhakaran transformed a small band of poorly armed rebels into one of the world's most sophisticated and ruthless insurgencies and then made a string of miscalculations that led his Tamil Tigers to total defeat at the hands of the Sri Lankan military.

To his followers, Prabhakaran was the steadfast heart of the battle to establish a breakaway state for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority. But his many detractors saw him as the brutal ruler of a suicide cult who repeatedly sabotaged peace deals in his pursuit of power.

Ruler of suicide cult