Belgium on Monday handed over to French authorities a British scammer at the center of a Netflix documentary, arrested in early September while he was on the run after the attack on two gendarmes in central France, a source told AFP. source close to the case.
Robert Hendy-Freegard, also known as David Hendy, “
left the Brussels prison where he was imprisoned on Monday afternoon
,” said this source.
Well-known in Britain, Robert Hendy-Freegard is the central subject of the documentary
The Puppetmaster: Lessons in Handling
and the fiction film
Rogue Agent
, both of which air on the Netflix platform.
He was to be handed over to the Limoges prosecutor's office, where an investigation for "
attempted homicide
" was entrusted to an investigating judge a few days after this attack which occurred on August 25.
Read alsoFalse spy, real crook: who is Robert Hendy-Freegard, Briton wanted by the French police?
Targeted by a European arrest warrant (MAE), Robert Hendy-Freegard is suspected of having voluntarily knocked down two French gendarmes with his car on August 25 in Vidaillat (Creuse) during an inspection of his dog breeding.
When the gendarmes asked him to go to the nearest brigade, the suspect started his vehicle and then hit the soldiers.
The 51-year-old Briton, who fled after the attack, was arrested on September 2 in Grand-Bigard near Brussels.
He challenged his extradition before the Belgian courts, but all avenues of appeal have been exhausted.
In 2005, he was sentenced in his country to life imprisonment for kidnapping, deception, theft from students and women, from whom he had extracted more than a million pounds, in particular by posing as a spy for the MI5, the British internal intelligence service.
He was released in 2009 after his conviction for kidnapping was overturned by an appeals court.