The National Police arrested a British citizen in Alicante this week, wanted on a European arrest warrant for alleged sexual assaults on a minor.
Four incidents of sexual abuse have been recorded, all on the same victim, between January 1991 and June 1993, when the victim was the girl, the daughter of a former partner of the aggressor, was aged from 9 to 11 years old.
The Dublin District Court issued the warrant in January who was located by the organised crime and fugitive investigation group of the judicial police.
Two Garda detectives had previously questioned the man in Alicante last year, resulting in the Irish director of public prosecutions recommending that he face four charges in connection with the victim´s more recent allegations.
The suspect, a man in his 60´s, is reported in the Irish press as being a known supporter of Sinn Féin, is also an alleged senior IRA commander who was in charge of operations to bomb England.
He was also said to have been wanted for questioning in connection with the 1996 murder of Garda Jerry McCabe during a botched armed robbery in Adare, Co Limerick, but this investigation was dropped a decade later during political and diplomatic negotiations regarding the formation of the policing arrangements in Northern Ireland.