Former Sri Lankan President Wickremesinghe has been arrested on charges of misappropriation of public funds.

Former Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe has been arrested on charges of alleged misuse of funds, police said.

He faces three charges related to foreign trips he made while serving as president.

Wickremesinghe arrived at the Colombo Magistrates’ Court on Friday, having already given a statement to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) earlier in the day. He was remanded in custody despite a request for bail on health grounds.

He served as president from 2022 to 2024, stepping into the role after the country’s worst economic crisis sparked a popular uprising that forced his predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to flee.

Wickremesinghe has also served six separate terms as prime minister since the 1990s.

According to BBC Sinhala, the 76-year-old has made 23 foreign trips during his tenure as president, costing 600 million rupees ($2m; £1.4m).

Friday's arrest is linked to Wickremesinghe's stopover in the UK in 2023 on his way back from the G77 summit in Cuba, the AFP news agency reported.

On the occasion, he and his wife attended a function at the University of Wolverhampton.

Sri Lanka's CID alleges that it was a private trip for which state funds were used - a claim Wickremesinghe denies.

Their investigation was initially referred to court in June.

Wickremesinghe, the first former president to be arrested in Sri Lanka, has been a feature of the island nation's politics since he was first elected to parliament in 1977.

A lawyer by profession, he comes from a wealthy family of politicians and businessmen.

He is credited with cleaning up the image of the United National Party (UNP) after taking over its leadership in 1994 by setting up a disciplinary commission to rid the party of corrupt members.

Over the years, he made several bids to become president - only securing the role he wanted after Rajapaksa fled in 2022.

By then, his party had been nearly wiped out in the 2020 elections, leaving him as its sole representative in parliament.

He lost to the left-leaning Anuradha Kumara Dissanayake in the 2024 elections.