A 76-year-old British national in Gozo, Malta has been identified by local police and will be extradited to the UK to serve time in prison for the sexual assault of a girl aged under 13.
Roderick Macdonald consented to be extradited yesterday morning after his arrest, according to the Times of Malta.
Macdonald, who changd his name to Robinson after being convicted if child sex offences in the UK, also is wanted for questioning by UK police in connection with a paedophile ring that may be linked to the possible abduction of Madeleine McCann, that’s according to the UK’s Daily Mail and the Mirror.
The Mirror reported that Macdonald/Robinson was in the Algarve at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance from the resort of Praia da Luz in 2007 when she was three, although this report is not backed up be hard evidence.
Even if not in Portugal at the time, and reliable sorces refer to MacDonald's presence in New Zealand at the time of Madeleine's disappearance, officers will want to question him about his knowledge of paedophile rings operating at the time.
Operation Grange officers want to question Macdonald as part of their wide-ranging investigation which includes piecing together 18 possibly relevant burglaries of properties in the Algarve between 2004 and 2010.
The break-ins stopped in 2010 around the time that Macdonald was arrested in Olhão and deported to Australia on charges of raping an eight-year-old girl.
While on bail in Australia he fled to New Zealand where he was arrested for further child sex offences. Macdonald had surrendered his passport but used a stolen one to fly to Portugal.
At some point in Macdonald's bizarre travel scheme he ended up in Thailand but was deported to Britain after the Thai authorities discovered details of his criminal past and decided that he was not welcome.
Then he settled in Brighton and registered on the sex offenders’ register but in 2012 was given a suspended prison sentence for abusing five-year-old and seven-year-old girls in Brighton but fled back to the Far East.
A European arrest warrant had been raised in April, 2013 at Lewes Crown Court in East Sussex which has been used to detain MacDonald in Malta and ship him back to the UK to face some detailed questioning relating to Operation Grange and Madeleine McCann's disappearance.
