Joint Sri Lankan-Australian citizen Premakumar Gunaratnam, 42, went missing on Friday from Kiribathgoda, north of Colombo, where he was preparing to launch a new political party, according to his family and fellow activists.
Gunaratnam is the leader of a breakaway faction of the JVP, or People's Liberation Front. The JVP led two failed bids to violently overthrow governments in 1971 and 1987 in campaigns that left up to 100,000 people dead.
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Australia pressed Sri Lanka for urgent clarification on his whereabouts and a foreign office spokeswoman said Tuesday that he had been accounted for.
"We can confirm the safety of the 42-year-old man from New South Wales reported missing in the region of Kiribathgoda, Sri Lanka, on 7 April," the spokeswoman told AFP, declining to elaborate.
Gunaratnam's family said that he had been abducted by an armed group, with his Frontline Socialist Party splinter group blaming the "state and government".
Colombo has denied any involvement and its envoy to Canberra said there was no record of an Australian passport holder with Gunaratnam's name entering Sri Lanka recently.
Rights groups have reported dozens of abductions since the end of the island's civil war in 2009, but at least some of the incidents appear to have been private disputes or underworld activities.
