A man is due in court charged with the kidnap and false imprisonment of schoolgirl Shannon Matthews, police said.

Michael Donovan, 39, will appear before Dewsbury magistrates court in West Yorkshire. He was arrested on March 14 after police raided a house and found the missing 11-year-old. She disappeared on February 19, prompting one of the biggest police inquiries in the area since the Yorkshire Ripper investigation of the 1970s. The schoolgirl remains in police care while detectives try to establish exactly what happened to her.

In a statement released earlier this month, her mother Karen Matthews said: "I fully understand that the police need to keep speaking to Shannon. I appreciate that could take some time and is not something that is going to happen overnight. "When we do get Shannon back home with us we will plan a bit of party to welcome her home and we will be involving all the community in that to thank them for all their support."

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