UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Lin Jenkins
Saturday 14 May 2016
A priest wanted in connection with child sex abuse allegations at a school where he taught for 12 years has been arrested in Kosovo five years after he failed to respond to police bail.
Laurence Soper, the former abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Ealing Abbey in west London, failed to respond to bail in March 2011 and was thought to have been in Rome when a European arrest warrant was put out for him months later. He had been arrested and released on police bail the previous year.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “We are aware of an arrest and are currently in liaison with the relevant authorities.”
News of the arrest was delivered on Saturday by the Albeu news agency, which said that the priest, who was known in Kosovo as Andrew Soper, was arrested on Thursday in the street where he lived, in the town of Peja .
Neighbours told a reporter that Soper, 72, had lived in the town for some years, did not have a job and had said he was writing a book.
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