A 76-year-old British national, who was living in Gozo, will be extradited to the UK where he will serve time for the sexual assault of a girl aged under 13.

Roderick Macdonald, who was living in an apartment at Ta Cenc, consented to be extradited this morning before Magistrate Audrey Demicoli.

He was arrested by the Malta police in the whereabouts of Sannat yesterday.

Roderick Macdonald – who also used the surname Robinson – is also wanted by UK police who believe he can shed light on a paedophile ring possibly linked to the abduction of Madeleine McCann, according to UK tabloid newspapers Daily Mail and the Mirror.

Madeleine McCann has been missing since May 2007. She disappeared during a family holiday in Portugal as her parents Kate and Gerry were eating in a near-by restaurant

The Mirror reported that Mr Macdonald was in Algarve when the three-year-old vanished in 2007.Scotland Yard detectives chasing new leads in Praia da Luz where Madeleine went missing wanted to quiz him about paedophile rings in the area in 2007.

Police were ­investigating 18 possible linked break-ins at Algarve villas by a lone intruder from 2004 to 2010.The attacks stopped in 2010, at around the time Robinson was deported from Portugal to Australia for raping an eight-year-old girl there, the Mirror reported in May.

Within weeks of his release the former oil rig worker fled to Thailand but three months later he was deported back to Britain after Thai authorities found out about his past.

He moved to south coast resort Brighton where he was made to sign the sex offenders register but in 2012 he was given a suspended prison sentence in 2012 for abusing five- and seven-year-old girls in Brighton who bore a resemblance to Madeleine, the Mirror reported.

Mr Macdonald appeared in court in Malta this morning under arrest on the strength of a provisional arrest warrant issued by the courts after the UK judicial authorities requested his extradition "to serve a term of imprisonment of sexual assault of a female under 13 years of age".

A European Arrest Warrant had been issued against him on April 25, 2013, by the Lewes Crown Court in East Sussex

Police Inspector Mario Cuschieri prosecuted.

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