Episode 3 Fugitives

-Come on!

-On the run...

-Get back here!

-..and over here.

-Hands out now! Hands out!

When foreign criminals flee their home countries,

many hide out in the UK.

-Give me your hands.

-But if they think they're safe, they're wrong.

'They know they're wanted.

'A lot of these people are waiting for that knock on the door.'

But the traffic in fugitives isn't all one way.

Across Europe, there are hundreds of British criminals

also trying to escape justice.

From the sun-drenched Costas

where the villains seek a life of luxury

to the busy streets of the Dutch capital

where many continue their life of crime.

We join the crack teams hunting them down.

When you take the risk to come to Amsterdam as a criminal,

there's a high chance that we catch you.

When it comes to justice, borders are no barrier.

You're under arrest under the Extradition Act 2003.

This is how the police take down the fugitives...

Police officer!

..both at home and abroad.

If you're thinking of running, don't.

We will find you.

We will bring you back.

In today's programme,

could a man accused of murder during these riots

now be working in a West London newsagents?

-Is this your photograph?

-No, sir. This one is not mine.

In Leeds, officers track down someone

wanted for people trafficking in Portugal.

I'm going to arrest you on a European Arrest Warrant issued by

the Portuguese authorities for an offence of human trafficking.

-Human Trafficking?

-Human trafficking, yeah.

And how a major British drugs baron got his comeuppance

thanks to determined undercover Dutch officers.

When we heard it was a big fish we said to each other,

"You can run but you can't hide."

In West Yorkshire, a two-man team are out

to find and arrest foreign offenders.

It's 11 o'clock on a Monday night, and PCs Tom Allen and Dave Lockwood

are setting off in search of a man who is very difficult to find.

So tonight we're going to be looking for a lad

who we've been looking for for probably a couple of months now.

He's got loads and loads of addresses in Leeds

and I've been working my way through them.

And, in truth, it's been hard work because he moves around so much.

The team head towards Leeds and the last-known address for the man

they're looking for.

Ladislav Danco is accused of four offences,

including theft and burglary,

back home in the Czech Republic.

He's wanted by the Czech authorities for

"theft from a shop, burglary, damage to motor vehicle

"and section five of the Public Order Act."

But the man they're after has made a basic mistake.

It's a stroke of luck, really.

This gentleman has lost his ID, lost his passport

and a number of other ID within the Leeds area,

so he's contacted the police to report that missing.

In doing that, it's given us a new address,

which has saved me a lot of time.

There's a contradiction there. There's a guy wanted.

He's tried to remain at large by changing his address frequently,

but after a period of time there

becomes that normalisation where

they believe that they're no longer wanted,

there's no-one looking for them,

and they try to assimilate into society.

And it's quite a natural, normal thing to do to,

to report your passport missing at a police station.

He was clearly unaware that by doing that he was just introducing himself

to law enforcement to say, "Here I am."

When Dave and Tom arrive at the new address,

at first there's no sign of the man wanted in the Czech Republic.

Young kid having his tea.

KNOCK AT DOOR

I think he's eating a tub of ice cream.

-Hello, love.

-Hello.

-Hello, it's the police.

Are you OK? Am I OK to come in and talk with you?

-Yeah.

-OK. Do you speak good English?

OK. What nationality are you, please?

-Me?

-Yeah.

-Czech Republic.

-Czech Republic.

Is there anybody else in the house?

Yeah, my stepdad.

-What he's called?

-Ladislav.

-Ladislav.

Can you ask him to come down, please, so I can talk to you all?

-Would that be OK? Hello, Ladislav.

-Are you OK?

-OK.

-Do you speak good English?

Ladislav clearly hasn't been expecting visitors,

and it's obvious he speaks little English.

I'm going to get a police interpreter on the phone, OK?

-And then we'll talk to you.

-I'll just go upstairs with you.

Whilst Ladislav Danco gets dressed,

Dave calls an interpreter who will explain the charges.

I will be arresting this male and I need to use yourself to explain

to him what's happening,

so he'll know what I'm arresting him for,

and obviously if he's got any medical conditions or anything

before we leave the house.

Ladislav, come and take a seat, please.

-Yeah, yeah.

-On here I have the interpreter. So take a seat.

-Do you just want to make sure you can understand her?

-Hello.

You can understand her? If you can explain to him the reason I'm here

is there's a European arrest warrant being issued for him

by the Czech authorities.

The man's partner is anxious.

She wants to know where he will be taken.

He'll be going to court tomorrow in London, OK?

OK, say again, please. Tomorrow is London court?

Yes, yes. There's two courts tomorrow, 10am and 2pm.

We always aim to get them there for ten, OK?

If, for any reason, they're really busy tomorrow,

it may get pushed on to 2pm.

But, as it stands, I aim to get him there ready at court for 10am.

If there's nothing else, we're going to be leaving now, OK?

All right. Come with me, fella.

You got it?

-Right. Just put your hands out.

-Sorry.

You're OK.

Just... OK? Are they all right?

Ladislav Danco will be taken to a custody suite in Leeds,

where his identity will be checked and confirmed.

Two thumbs.

Tomorrow morning, he will be taken to Westminster Magistrates' Court.

The fact that he could be sent home

to face trial for four different offences seems to be sinking in.

It's the end of a long shift,

and time for Dave and Tom to tackle the paperwork

to start the extradition process.

It's likely that Ladislav Danco will stay in this country

for several more months until that is complete.

For now, the authorities will be keeping a close eye on him.

Tomorrow it's probably going to be 500 to £1,500 to get bail.

On top of that, he will have to sign on at a police station,

probably three times a week.

He will probably have a curfew at home and he will get a tag.

The Pennines - high moorland dividing northern England.

Back in 2012, these quiet roads

were arteries for the trafficking of drugs between

two organised crime gangs on either side of the country.

It was drugs. It was a lot of drugs.

There was a lot of money changing hands.

The trade centred on Liverpool on the west coast,

and Hartlepool on the east.

For years, police in both areas struggled to find the ringleader.

But when surveillance officers staked out an Italian restaurant

in Wetherby in West Yorkshire in September 2012,

they were able to identify the Mr Big of the operation.

It was this man, Ian Stanton, who was running the show.

His Merseyside gang was peddling drugs to a huge area,

from the Midlands all the way up to Scotland.

In the north-east we're just one element of his operations.

From the vast telephone analysis we did,

he was sending couriers on a daily basis

to different parts of the country.

With Stanton and other gang members identified,

police in the north-east were able to seize huge quantities of drugs

and cash in seven different operations.

But it seemed to make little difference.

They had immense resilience because they had so much money,

so many drugs.

It didn't seem to matter what we did or what drugs we took out,

they had the ability to keep going.

By now, Ian Stanton was one of the UK's biggest drug dealers.

The National Crime Agency,

who lead the UK's fight against serious and organised crime,

were keen to take him down.

This surveillance officer was part of the operation.

He was a nationwide criminal.

Not just nationwide - internationally, as well.

He had links to the north-east.

He travelled to London frequently.

So, basically, borders held no bounds for him.

Then in May 2013 came a major breakthrough.

In a shipping container of frozen beef at Tilbury Docks in Essex,

officers working for the port uncovered 400 kilos of cocaine

hidden in 16 holdalls.

It had a street value of £71 million.

We've gathered evidence before,

but we've never had a seizure of such a large amount.

400 kilos of cocaine is very significant.

Obviously to flood the streets with that amount of commodity would cause

some serious harm to local communities.

It was one of the biggest drugs hauls ever seen in the UK

and it gave officers the opportunity to plan a daring sting,

hoping to catch Stanton and his gang red-handed.

For many fugitives, a steady supply of ready cash is essential

for funding a life of luxury abroad.

Criminals are increasingly wary of using bank accounts and cards to

transfer money as investigators can pick up a trail all too easily.

If you're using your bank cards or a wire transfer, we can track that,

we can trace it.

We will find the money and we have a really, really good relationship

with the banks. We'll get the money back.

Men and women on the run often think it's safer

to rely on old-fashioned banknotes.

But the National Crime Agency is already fighting back,

banning the fugitives' favourite, the 500 euro note.

We worked with the European Central Bank

and the Bank of England to get that note removed from circulation.

So it's just not a normal note that you would see,

because every indication that we had was that the only people that were

using the 500 euro note were organised criminals -

principally drug dealers.

On the front line to stop the traffic of large quantities of cash

through ports and airports are the sniffer dogs.

Here at the Surrey Police dog school,

this group of young spaniels are over halfway through their six-week

training course, learning how to detect drugs, guns and cash.

Scout is a springer spaniel.

He's been working with handler Scott for just four weeks.

We've been learning to find money today.

So we have been learning to find sterling

and also euros.

We know that along with drugs, there's also a lot of cash

and we need to find that cash to be able to take it off the streets.

Come on! One more...

Andy Hayward has been working with police dogs for 24 years.

He says dogs' noses are so sophisticated,

that they can tell the difference between euros and yen.

It's the ink more than anything else.

The paper does have an odour

and it varies in different parts of the world,

but most of Europe is the same ink and paper.

And that changes when you go over to the Americas

and when you go across over to Asia.

It's time for Scout to put his super snout into action

and learn to sniff for cash.

Here we've got the cash. It's issued by the Bank of England.

In order to make sure the dogs don't sniff out the odd tenner,

they're trained to detect large amounts of money.

When it's being smuggled in or it's illegal,

it's normally a large amount, and for these dogs to work,

we're not looking for the general Joe Public,

the member of the public who's going to be there with it in his wallet

or things like that, so they tend to ignore that.

We're looking for bulk amounts of cash.

First of all, Scout is shown the money

and taught to recognise its smell.

The idea is we will imprint the scent of that cash whereby the dog

associates that smell with the reward of the tennis ball.

The dogs are led to the breeze-block with the money hidden inside,

and as soon as they smell it, they're given a reward.

But Andy's not happy that Scout has got the smell

properly imprinted on his brain.

He's been a bit cute.

He's had a very quick sniff and frozen.

I'd like him to have a proper draw of the substance.

It's second time lucky and onto the next stage of the lesson.

Who's a good boy?

At this stage, I'm pretty confident they've all been imprinted

but we don't know that until we go through the proving session,

which is the next phase, where they'll go from block one,

and they'll do the complete run

and it should indicate where the cash is

and that's proved that they'll have it in their heads.

This time the cash could be hidden inside any of these blocks.

-Indication...

-Whoa!

As soon as he got to that block, he's had a smell of the gap,

the money is in there and he's had a freeze indication,

he's had a reward. I'm happy he's imprinted.

Excellent, mate. That's fine.

Scout is now ready to undertake the final part of his training.

If he can pass this test, he's on his way to becoming

a specialist sniffer dog.

In London, the Metropolitan Police's extradition unit deals with hundreds

of cases each year.

It's DS Pete Rance's job to track down men and women wanted

-in other countries.

-There's a real mix of cases that we deal with.

Some are as simple as knocking on a front door

and people come willingly,

Others involve a lot of resources, a lot of time,

a lot of effort, a lot of detective work

to actually confirm people's identities.

And, you know, there are...

Living in the UK, there are people who don't want to be found.

Can you open the door, please? It's the police.

Most of the extradition unit's work involves finding fugitives

from other European countries hiding out in the capital,

but they're also responsible for arresting those

who are wanted further afield.

'The team do deal with a wide range of offences.'

They can be from a fraud -

what we'd consider to be a straightforward fraud -

through to wanted for murder.

We get requests from all over the world

and they are broken up into two regions.

One is EU and then the other is non-EU.

And there's different legislation and different thresholds

that need to be met for those two areas.

Back in 2002, riots in the Gujarat region of India

hit the headlines around the world.

-NEWS FOOTAGE:

-These were Muslim homes torched last night

by an armed mob. Most of the Muslims fled, but not all.

-Five or six.

-REPORTER:

-Five or six children.

Widespread unrest between Muslims and Hindus led to the destruction

of villages and towns, and left over 3,000 people dead.

Intelligence that's just landed on Pete's desk indicates that one of

those accused of particularly serious offences

could now be living in London. It's disturbing reading.

These are statements from people in India detailing what they saw

and what happened.

You know, it's... Some of it's quite...graphic.

You know, people being sprayed with kerosene.

That's the sort of thing we're dealing with here in terms of...

what he's believed to have been part of.

The accused man's name is Samir Vinubhai Patel -

wanted for murder, arson and riot in India.

The accusation is that a group of Hindu men have attacked

a Muslim village, poured kerosene on properties.

It resulted in burning people alive. Extremely serious.

And India issued a formal request

for the extradition of Samir Vinubhai Patel,

after an Interpol circulation had been made

seeking his whereabouts.

With new information about a potential address for Patel in

West London, Pete wastes no time in briefing his colleagues,

DCs Dave Salmon and Carly Rigg.

So the intention today is to go to this bloke's work address,

which is a newsagents over in... Near Heathrow Airport, in Hounslow.

I'll go into the address, ascertain that he's in there and working.

He was in there last week working on the Tuesday.

We had someone have eyes on him last week.

So we're confident there's a strong possibility that he'll be there.

-Right.

-Everyone happy?

-Yeah, happy with that.

The key to establishing the suspect's identity

is a series of photographs linking Patel to the riots in India

and a later offence in the UK.

The gentleman that they want is this individual here.

It's the person that's wanted in India.

We know that that same man made an application for a UK visa

back in 2005 and the application was granted in 2006.

And the work we've done has established that this individual

was arrested in 2013 for shoplifting in the UK, in London.

And it's our belief that these two men are one and the same.

But when they arrive, the man working in the shop

says he's not the man shown on Pete's paperwork.

-Is this your photograph?

-No, it's my one - other one.

No is my one.

He's accepted initially the photograph is him,

although I think when he's realised what's about to come

-he's then retracted that.

-No, sir, this one is not mine.

You're saying it's not you now?

Hunting fugitives takes teamwork.

On the front line are the police making the arrests,

but behind the scenes is an army of investigators

at the National Crime Agency.

My role involves looking for fugitives who are wanted by other

European countries who we think might be living in the UK.

Across Europe, 18,000 arrest warrants are issued every year.

The work to track down the fugitives hiding out in the UK begins,

for people like Helen, with a European arrest warrant.

You do have to read a lot of upsetting things that

sometimes the worst people in humanity have done

to other people and it can be hard

but I think sometimes it gives you a bit of...

Spurs you on a bit to go, "Well, now I want to find you."

Officers like Helen can access a suspect's financial,

phone and social security records.

But sometimes it's as simple as checking out social media.

"Where are you now?" is essentially the question we're asking.

"Where are you right now? Where do I think you're going to be?"

So that it's worth sending out to a police force,

and do I think, if the police go and knock on that address,

are you going to be there?

Providing the intelligence that leads to an arrest

makes the job worthwhile.

It's that satisfaction of thinking,

especially when it's a dangerous individual,

"you're off the streets, you can't commit these kind of offences now

"because you are in our custody.

"You're going to face justice for what you've done."

You're helping to protect the public and you're helping to protect people

not just here but across Europe as well,

so it feels very wide-reaching.

It's wide-reaching satisfaction.

Kingpin Ian Stanton ran a drug-dealing empire from Merseyside,

doing business with crime gangs across the country.

In 2012, Cleveland Police had already seized large quantities

of the cocaine and amphetamine

supplied to dealers in the north-east,

but the gang seemed unstoppable.

If they lost a kilo of cocaine it didn't really seem to make

that much difference to them.

They had the money and the means to get a resupply.

The National Crime Agency launched an investigation into Ian Stanton

and his gang. This surveillance officer was involved.

He was a nationwide criminal.

In fact, not just a nationwide - internationally as well.

Borders held no bounds for him.

The investigation made a major breakthrough

when a huge quantity of cocaine was discovered hidden

in a shipment of beef at Tilbury Docks in Essex.

Port authority opened up the back of the container and found within it,

piled up high, just at the front where you open the doors,

black holdalls - large black holdalls.

Within the large black holdalls were kilo-sized shrink-wrapped packages.

Inside the frozen meat container were 400 kilos of drugs

destined for the north-west.

We couldn't believe how much commodity actually was within

the container, to be honest.

We did tests on the drugs and we identified that it was cocaine,

79% pure, a street value of approximately 70 million.

At the NCA, officers devised a plan to catch dealers red-handed.

They replaced the cocaine with dummy packages

and watched to see who would collect them.

We ended up basically dummying the load,

changing the drugs for an innocuous substance.

The lorry of frozen beef with the dummy drugs on board was followed

the 250 miles from Tilbury to Wigan.

Surveillance officers looked on as one of the crew collected the drugs.

It didn't take him long to discover the switch

and call the rest of his gang to a crisis meeting,

all under the watchful gaze of the NCA surveillance team.

We covered a meeting on the Thursday of the 16th of May in Aintree

where five individuals had a meeting to discuss the loss of commodity,

as in, they didn't know where the cocaine had gone.

The meeting was headed by Ian Stanton

and they were discussing how they could recover the drugs.

But with the massive haul of drugs seized and the police on his trail,

Stanton decided it was time to leave the country,

and although he was fleeing the UK,

he'd still continue to run his empire from abroad.

He was very much in control on a daily basis.

He would send orders out to those beneath him,

he constantly wanted reassuring that his orders were being carried out.

He wanted to know who had received what drugs,

what money they'd collected in.

It seemed likely that Stanton was running things from somewhere

in the Netherlands where he was known to have contacts.

Six months later, a chance encounter with undercover police

in Rotterdam would blow his cover.

Thinking they were tackling a small-time drugs dealer,

the officers drove to the house in the north of the city

where they believed ecstasy was being dealt.

Coming up...

Dutch cops come face-to-face with Merseyside's most wanted.

When it comes to tracking down men on the run,

police will often follow the money.

If somebody's spending cash and only spending cash,

especially if they're living in a modern city, it stands out,

they stick out like a sore thumb.

And if they're a foreign individual and they're only spending cash,

then they really stick out.

On the front line to intercept friends and relatives

carrying ready cash to loved ones abroad are the police dogs.

At Sussex Police's dog training centre,

Scout is learning to detect cash, and he's passed the first two stages

of his training with flying colours.

Now he's taken to a different part of the building

to sit his final test.

Scout makes a good start.

It takes him less than a minute to find the cash.

His handler, PC Scott Green, is pleased.

So, just from earlier on - from proving on the blocks,

he's taken that on board and we've now come to an environment and,

yeah, he's just found some cash. So it's quite a quick process.

Really happy with Scout and he's progressing nicely.

There's a reason why spaniels like Scout

make particularly good sniffer dogs.

Alongside other long-nosed breeds like the German Shepherd,

the scroll-shaped bones inside the nose make these dogs

1,000 times more sensitive to smell than humans.

So the scroll shapes travel all the way up here

throughout the entire snout

and that allows dogs to

have a large surface area.

So on top of the scroll-shaped structures you get

what we call membranes that contain around them

what we call odour-detecting cells.

These odour-detecting cells, if you roll them up in dogs,

they are larger, the size of an A4 paper in comparison to humans,

which is probably just the size of a stamp.

And it's those extraordinary senses of smell which enable these dogs

to sniff out those sterling and euro notes.

Having passed his final test, Scout will soon be on duty,

hot on the scent of any cash

destined to help fugitives evade justice.

There's nothing better than going out there, catching the bad guys.

It's a really unique privilege for me, I think,

because these dogs are great.

In West Yorkshire, police officers Dave Lockwood and Tom Allen

have a new European arrest warrant.

They need to track down a man who is accused of committing

serious offences in Portugal over a decade ago.

It's for human trafficking and the chap we're looking for is facing

a sentence of up to 25 years.

But finding the suspect could be tricky

as the warrant has no photograph or fingerprints.

But they do have some information which could help locate him.

We know which car he's using,

so we're going to drive past the address now, see if his car's there.

Although they know the vehicle is being used around Leeds,

they have no idea what this man looks like.

I think it's going to be one of two ways,

he's going to be tiny and skinny, weedy, or he's going to be huge.

-What do you think?

-Don't know.

If he's huge, you'll go, "I'll be right behind you!"

If there's a dog, you'll go in first.

As soon as they arrive at the address,

Dave spots the car and there's a man in the driver's seat.

-He's sat in the car, mate, he's sat in the car.

-Is he?

-Yeah.

-Just there?

-Just play on it's something to do with the car.

-Hiya, are you all right, pal?

-Yes, I am, yeah.

-Do you speak good English?

-Yes, I do.

-Can we just have a chat with you, pal?

-Yes.

-Do you want to finish your call?

-That's fine, no. That's fine.

-You're finished.

-Is it your car?

-Yes, yes, it's mine.

-Do you live here, somewhere here?

-Yes.

-Are we all right to go into your house and talk to you there?

-Yes.

-Is there a problem?

-There may be, yeah, yeah.

We'll talk to you now so people aren't listening.

Dave and Tom are pretty sure this is their man

but they're reluctant to discuss the details out on the street.

They move into the man's house to break the bad news.

-Did you used to live in Portugal?

-Yes.

-You did, right.

Unfortunately, I'm going to arrest you on a European arrest warrant

issued by the Portuguese authorities for an offence of human trafficking.

-All right?

-Human trafficking?

-Human trafficking, yeah.

We've got some paperwork for you that we'll...

-Human trafficking?

-Yeah.

From when?

Between 2001 and 2004, allegedly.

We don't know anything about it,

they've just asked us to locate you and arrest you, all right,

and put you before the court.

The wanted man is clearly shocked by Tom's revelations,

but the officers have to make sure that he has no surprises for them.

No offence, I don't know you,

-but we're not going to risk you running off, OK?

-No, no. Please!

Have you got a jacket? A hoodie...?

-Just grab that and we'll just bring it back in.

-LADY:

-That's mine.

Yeah, we'll bring it back. Once he's in the car, we'll bring that back.

Just hold that and no-one needs to see.

He's not happy about being led out of his house in handcuffs,

so the officers try to be discreet.

I'll take your missus's jacket back.

Cheers, thank you.

On the way to the police station Dave explains what will happen next.

Right, just to let you know,

do you know what to expect when we go into the police station?

-No.

-Right, when we go through to custody

we'll have to wait in a waiting room and once they're ready for us

to be called up, we'll go up to something called the custody desk.

Now, the sergeant needs to know what you've been arrested for

to make sure he's going to detain you or not,

make sure we've done what we do with our powers.

Anyone arrested here in West Yorkshire

must appear before a judge at an extradition court in London

as soon as possible.

But as Dave explains, this man will have the right to appeal

against the offences he's alleged to have committed many years ago.

OK, any questions or anything while you're at custody just ask

and we'll let you know.

Just keep it in the back of your head

you might be home in 24 hours' time, all right?

Just deal with tomorrow first

before you move on and start panicking about all else.

Just watch yourself, he's going to open the door.

Let's take you inside, fella.

-Come out?

-Yeah, yeah, come on, we're going to take you inside.

There we go.

As he's brought into the police station,

the prisoner starts to realise just how bad things really are.

Little did he know when the police came knocking that allegations about

his past would catch up with him in such a dramatic way.

What the Portuguese are saying...

They want you to go back, though. It's serious.

-Tomorrow, I can't say what's going to happen...

-I know.

But you've not been committing loads of crime here in the UK.

What I'm saying to you, there's no aggravating features

apart from what you're wanted for.

Now he's facing a legal battle to prove he didn't commit the crimes

he's accused of.

At Tilbury Docks in Essex in May 2013,

a routine search uncovered one of the biggest hauls of drugs

to be smuggled into the UK -

£70 million worth of cocaine hidden in a shipping container

full of frozen beef.

We couldn't believe how much commodity was actually within

the container, to the honest.

We did tests on the drugs and we identified

that it was cocaine, 79% pure.

Heading up the gang tasked with recovering the drugs

was Ian Stanton.

But when investigators began to close in, he went on the run.

Six months later, undercover officers in the Netherlands

went to investigate an address in Rotterdam.

They'd been tipped off that small quantities of drugs

were being sold from the house.

What they didn't realise was that

one of the UK's most wanted fugitives was hiding inside.

Upstairs, Stanton was hiding.

With the cuffs on the fugitive, they searched the house.

Intelligence officers set about establishing who the man

they'd arrested was.

Stanton was using a false passport but checks on his documents

and fingerprints soon identified him.

We then took contact with the English police through Interpol

and they said, well, Stanton is one of their most wanted criminals

in England and this is his picture.

At the NCA, the surveillance team who'd helped track him

were delighted that Ian Stanton,

one of Merseyside's most notorious drug barons,

was to be returned to the UK to face justice.

He was actually extradited back to the UK

on the 18th December 2013 and that was a good day for the team.

We sent a member of our staff down to arrest him,

brought him back to the north-west area.

The team were really pleased because obviously it's sending a message

out to the public that basically no matter where you go,

you've got no way to hide and we will look for you,

we will find you and we will bring you back.

In Hounslow, Pete Rance and his team of detectives are getting ready to

arrest a man accused of a long list of crimes committed in India.

During widespread rioting in Gujarat back in 2002,

Samir Patel is accused of burning three people to death

as well as arson and rioting.

He got a visa... Legitimately obtained a visa

to come to the United Kingdom in 2005

but it was only a short-term visa

and what happened was he didn't go back, he disappeared into the ether.

He got arrested a few years ago for shoplifting

in the United Kingdom and provided a different date of birth

with just the name Samir Patel,

which in itself is quite a common name,

so that didn't lead to us being able to locate or find him

at that particular time.

But further work that's been done led us to believe that

the Samir Patel that did get arrested for shoplifting

back in 2013 was in fact the person that was wanted in India.

The team have tracked Patel down to a newsagents in Hounslow,

West London. Posing as a customer, Pete pops into the shop

to check if he's there.

And our man's serving. He soon returns with good news.

Right, everyone ready? Let's go.

It's time to make the arrest.

But first the team must confirm his identity.

My name's Pete Rance, I'm a detective sergeant with the Metropolitan Police.

-Can we just ask you your name, please?

-Patel.

-And your first name?

S Patel. S Patel.

S. What's the S stand for?

-Sam Patel. Sam Patel.

-Sam?

Sam. Have you got any middle names?

-Yeah.

-What's your middle name?

-Samir Patel. Samir Patel.

And do you have a middle...? A middle name in the middle?

-S V Patel. S V Patel.

-Asri?

-Samir V Patel.

-V? What does the V stand for? Vinubhai.

-Vinubhai.

'It helps a great deal if the person that you've got before you'

actually acknowledges and accepts that they're the person

wanted in that jurisdiction because then the issue's taken away

from the court, we can provide the evidence that they have consent...

That they have acknowledged that they're the person that's wanted.

Is that you when you were younger?

-No, sir.

-It is you?

-I think so.

-You think?

-Yes.

-It is you, yeah?

At first, the man agrees that

he is the man in the photograph Pete shows him.

And this is you when you made an application for a visa to come to

-the United Kingdom?

-No.

-Same person.

-No.

-Samir Vinubhai.

-But then he changes his story.

-Yeah?

-I'm... I don't think so.

-No, this is you, though, yeah?

-This is your photograph.

-No, is my one is the other one.

-No, sir, this one is not mine.

-You're saying it's not you, now?

-No.

Pete perseveres, and a new line of questioning seems to help.

What's your father's name?

-Vinubhai.

-Vinubhai.

So, father's name is Vinubhai. What's your mother's name?

-Vimlaben.

-Vimlaben.

-Yeah.

-Yeah? So this is you.

The crime was an old photo and obviously in the 14 years plus

that have passed, his appearance had changed.

I was absolutely confident that the person that I had before me was

in fact that the person that was wanted back in India.

-You said this is you.

-No, sir, this one is not mine.

Patel seems intent on denying he's the man on the application for

a visa that's now expired until Pete reveals he's there to arrest him

for a long list of very serious crimes.

You're accused of murder by setting on fire Kadarbhai Ismailbhai Vora.

You're wanted for murder by setting on fire Aaiyeshaben Abdulbhai.

And you're wanted for murder by setting on fire Nuriben Gafurbhai.

OK? You're under arrest on the warrant.

You do not have to say anything.

Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

Do you understand?

You're under arrest.

I'm just going to put these on you, OK, until we go to

a police station and we can take them off, OK?

OK, sir.

-I'm nothing what I was.

-It's the same people. The same people.

OK, we're going to take you to a central London police station,

OK, and then you'll be put before a court this afternoon.

It went as well as I hoped it would actually because he'd initially

given us the name Samir Vinubhai Patel,

which is the name on the warrant.

He's accepted initially that the photograph

of the requested person is him, although I think when he's realised

what's about to come he's then retracted

and said that the second photograph isn't him.

Samir Patel is taken into custody at Charing Cross Police Station.

Tomorrow, the man accused of three horrific murders will be put before

a judge who will rule on his extradition to India.

Ladislav Danco - wanted for offences including theft and burglary,

is currently on bail while he appeals against his extradition.

Samir Patel appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court in August 2016.

He consented to his extradition and is now in India awaiting trial

for murder, arson and riot.

The court decided not to uphold the extradition of the man accused of

people trafficking in Portugal.

And Merseyside's most wanted, Ian Stanton,

was in November 2013 sentenced to 12 years in prison.

He was jailed for a further 16 years in June 2015 for his part in

another multi-million pound drugs conspiracy.