A Scottish man who was on the UK’s most wanted list in connection with multiple sexual assaults has been arrested in Spain.<\/p>\n
John Rocks, 37, was arrested in Madrid on Saturday after police initially searched for him in Benidorm.<\/p>\n
Spain’s National Police said he had been living a nomadic lifestyle and moving between locations in order to evade arrest.<\/p>\n
Rocks had appeared on the National Crime Agency and Crimestoppers’ most wanted list in connection with the alleged offences, which are said to have happened between 2012 and 2022.<\/p>\n
Police said the arrest followed a two-year investigation after officers were alerted that Rocks may have been in the country.<\/p>\n
The information gathered by investigators indicated that he had been living an itinerant lifestyle to avoid detection and might be in Madrid, according to police.<\/p>\n
Authorities said this led to a surveillance operation on a central street in the Spanish capital, during which Rocks, who was wearing a cap and sunglasses in an apparent attempt to partially conceal his face, was located and arrested.<\/p>\n
Police said he gave different personal details during efforts to establish his identity and did not co-operate with officers.<\/p>\n
They added that he was initially identified by his tattoos before fingerprint checks confirmed he was the man wanted by Police Scotland.<\/p>\n
He later appeared before a court in Madrid and remains in custody pending a decision on his extradition to the UK.<\/p>\n
Rick Jones, international director of the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), said: “This arrest marks the 101st arrest in Operation Captura, a multi-agency campaign aimed at tracking down the UK’s most wanted individuals in Spain.<\/p>\n
“I pay tribute to the excellent work of our colleagues in the Spanish National Police who made this possible.<\/p>\n
“Working with them, and other law enforcement partners, we are determined to do all we can to ensure fugitives are returned to face the courts.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Scottish man who was on the UK’s most wanted list in connection with multiple sexual assaults has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26446,26447,12347,14690,17,14808,841],"class_list":["post-66217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-john-rocks","tag-most-wanted-list","tag-national-crime-agency","tag-national-police","tag-spain","tag-spanish-national-police","tag-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}