ACOURT TRIED TO FOOL COPS
Fugitive’s Italian tourist ruse
FUGITIVE Jamie Acourt pretended he was an Italian tourist when cops swooped on him at a Barcelona gym.
The wanted Brit was arrested on Friday at the Metropolitan Sagrada Familia Gym in the Spanish city.
Police sources said the former Stephen Lawrence murder suspect claimed he was an Italian on holiday.
But officers posing as gym users had been secretly watching Acourt, and pounced on him in a “pincer movement”.
Acourt – who had been named one of Britain’s most wanted – was held amid allegations he was involved in a £4million cannabis ring.
Shocked witnesses told how he was led away “head-down and handcuffed”.
It also emerged officers from a Madrid-based fugitives unit, who made the arrest with the help of the UK’s National Crime Agency, waited until Acourt was alone and not with two pals with whom he usually worked out.
The 41-year-old, from Eltham, south-east London, is due to appear before an extradition judge in a Madrid court tomorrow.
He is expected to be flown back to Britain within a week, unless he opposes extradition.
Spanish police confirmed he had been using false names and papers to try to stay on the run.
He is believed to have used a number of gyms in the Metropolitan chain – and signed up initially with one next to a police station.
A source involved in the two-year hunt for Acourt said: “He was doing everything he could to avoid detection, including using false names and travel documents and moving around different parts of Spain, including tourist areas where he would try to blend in with the British holiday and expat population.
“Undercover police officers were sent in to use the gyms he was working out at, including the one where he was held, so we could be sure we had the right man.
“It was important to minimise all the risks involved with an arrest of this nature, which is why it happened when he was on his own and his chances of escaping were limited. He tried to claim he was an Italian tourist when police got him.”
Expat Simon McDonald, from Leicester, said: “I saw five plainclothes officers. No-one spoke and that was the eerie thing.
“They were inside the gym around a table and took him away in handcuffs after a quick pincer movement. It was all very fast.”
Local Marc Montolio, 42, added: “No-one said anything. The man they held had his hand bowed.”
A spokesman for the gym said they were not warned about the police operation and could not comment.