Hunt for man who sexually attacked women

ONE man was responsible for two sex attacks carried out in Edinburgh more than five years ago, Police Scotland have said.

Advances in the investigation have revealed a full DNA profile for the person responsible, according to detectives.

In the first attack, a 19-year-old woman was assaulted after she got off a bus in Lanark Road West shortly after midnight on Thursday, August 27, 2015, when a man approached her in the Newmills Road area and claimed he had a knife.

He then led her to a nearby field, where she was raped.

Prior to this, on Wednesday, August 5, 2015, a 21-year-old woman was grabbed from behind and sexually assaulted in Craiglockhart Quadrant.

She had got off a bus in Colinton Road shortly before the attack, at around 10.30pm.

The man responsible had not been on either bus.

Detective Inspector Jon Pleasance, of Edinburgh Police Division, said: “We believe we’re looking for the person you’d least suspect – someone whose community wouldn’t think is responsible for such horrific offences.

“We’re asking everyone: please think back to the summer of 2015.

“Was there someone in your life – a friend, family member or colleague – acting different? Was their behaviour around this time at all unusual for them?”

PEERS have piled further pressure on the Prime Minister to think again about slashing aid to war-torn Yemen.

Tory former overseas development minister Baroness Chalker of Wallasey told the Lords: “We should not be cutting aid to Yemen, let alone all the other countries.”

To cheers of support in the chamber, Lady Chalker added: “We really need to look at this again.”

Former diplomat Lord Jay of Ewelme said cutting aid to Yemen “in the middle of a humanitarian emergency looks less like global Britain than little England and little England at its worst”.

Lord Jay, an independent crossbench peer, said he hoped it was not too late to reverse the decision.

The Government’s decision to cut aid to at least £87 million this year, down from a promise of £160m in 2020 and £200m in 2019, has sparked a furious backlash.

In the Lords, Labour’s Lord Collins of Highbury said every other G7 country was increasing aid in response to the pandemic while the UK was alone in cutting it.

Lord Collins urged ministers to rethink the cut in aid as well as the plan to cut aid spending in total from 0.7% to 0.5% of national income.