Spanish police arrest fugitive British rapist

POLICE in Spain have arrested a fugitive Briton said to be facing life in prison in the UK for five rapes on two women.

Detectives said they had tracked him down to a van he was living in after he used a fake identity to contact relatives on social media, with the assistance of Britain’s National Crime Agency.

British authorities told European police he was a wanted man in 2016, and officers in Spain were tipped off he was living somewhere along the country’s eastern coast in July last year.

He was arrested on Thursday in the Alicante region. The unnamed man will now appear before a judge at a court in Madrid for an extradition hearing.

A spokesman for Spain’s National Police in Alicante said: ‘[We] have arrested a British fugitive wanted for several sex attacks.’ Officers said one of his victims was a 15-year-old girl and the other was a woman raped four times.

The charges relate to offences committed between 1980 and 1983.