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Police barrier in Belgium (symbolic image): impostor arrested after attacking police officers
Photo: IMAGO
A British conman known as The Puppeteer from a Netflix documentary, wanted for attempted murder, has been arrested after escaping on a Belgian motorway.
The convicted serial scammer Robert Hendy-Freegard was caught near Brussels on Friday evening, a police spokeswoman said on Saturday.
He was wanted for attempted murder after he hit and injured two gendarmes who wanted to take him to the police station in France at the end of August.
Hendy-Freegard lived in France with his partner and ran a dog kennel there.
According to a message from the responsible Hendy-Freegard prefecture, one of the police officers present asked during a sanitary inspection of the company to come to the station.
The man then started his car and hit the two police officers.
They were taken to the hospital with serious injuries.
Hendy-Freegard, now 51, was sentenced to life imprisonment in London in 2005 for fraud, theft and kidnapping.
He had charmed his mostly female victims and then mercilessly ripped them off.
Some of them lived in psychological dependence on him for years.
Hendy-Freegard had told them he worked for MI5 and that they had to go into hiding to avoid being assassinated by the IRA terrorist group.
He drove his victims around for years, got them jobs and took the money they earned from them.
Because of his ability to manipulate people, he was nicknamed "the Puppeteer".
However, the kidnapping conviction against him was later overturned and Hendy-Freegard was released from prison in 2009.
Earlier this year, the US streaming service released a documentary series about him, in which several of his victims told how he had manipulated them over the years.
has/AFP
