Fugitive priest wanted by UK arrested in Kosovo
Police in Kosovo have arrested a Catholic priest accused of child sex offences while teaching at a religious school in Britain.
Andrew Charles Kingston Soper “was arrested in the eastern town of Peja by the fugitive arrest search team after the police got a hint from abroad that he was there,” said Kosovo’s chief of police’s directorate for international cooperation Veton Elshani on Sunday.
He explained that the arrest took place on Wednesday “on a European arrest warrant issued by Great Britain.”
“The public prosecutor ordered his detention until the court decides on his extradition,” Elshani said, adding that by the law the procedure lasts at least 40 days.
Soper, also known as Father Laurence, had been on the run since he jumped bail in 2011 before he could be charged with child abuse offences dating back to when he had taught at St. Benedict’s School, a private Catholic school in Ealing Abbey in west London.
He faces accusations of abusing five pupils.
Following an independent British report detailing 21 incidents of abuse by monks dating from the 1970s until 2010, in 2011, the St. Benedict’s school apologized and accepted recommendations to fundamentally change the way it is run to protect children in the future.
The reputation of the Catholic Church has been tarnished in the past years by numerous cases of child abuse allegedly being covered up by church officials.
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