Scotland sends US fugitive and rape suspect home

Scotland's justice secretary has confirmed that the extradition of the American fugitive Nicholas Rossi can go ahead.

Angela Constance signed the extradition order last week after a court ruled in August there was no legal barrier to Rossi being sent back to the United States to face rape charges.

He was arrested on the Covid ward of a Glasgow hospital in December 2021.

The 36-year-old has since claimed to be the victim of mistaken identity.

The convicted sex offender, who is originally from Rhode Island, said he was an Irish orphan called Arthur Knight.

However, last November, Sheriff Norman McFadyen ruled that he was Nicholas Rossi and not Arthur Knight, as he repeatedly claimed.

Authorities in the US have said Rossi was known by several aliases, including Nicholas Alahverdian.

In his extradition ruling, Sheriff McFadyen described Rossi as "dishonest and deceitful as he is evasive and manipulative".

He has two weeks to appeal the justice secretary's final decision to send the fugitive to Utah.

Separately, detectives in Essex want to interview Rossi in connection with an allegation of rape dating back to 2017.

In December 2019 he told media in his home state that he had late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma and had weeks to live.

Several news outlets in Rhode Island reported that he had died in February 2020.

However less than two years later, Rossi - who was the subject of an Interpol wanted notice - turned up on a hospital ward in Glasgow during the pandemic.

He was being treated for Covid-19 when he was arrested at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital on 13 December 2021.

Staff at the hospital recognised Rossi by the distinctive tattoos on his arms.