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AFP
Xavier Dupont de Ligonnes is suspected of murdering his wife and four children
A Frenchman suspected of killing his wife and four children in 2011 has been arrested at Glasgow Airport.
The AFP news agency said Xavier Dupont de Ligonnes was arrested after arriving in Scotland on a flight from Paris.
Mr Dupont de Ligonnes has been wanted for murder in France since his family was discovered buried in the garden of their family home in Nantes.
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The 58-year-old was reportedly travelling under a false name.
Police Scotland confirmed a man was in custody in connection with a European arrest warrant issued by the French authorities and said inquiries were ongoing to confirm his identity.
Sources close to the French investigation told AFP that officers had earlier picked out the suspect at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport as he prepared to board a flight to Glasgow.
After the plane landed in Scotland he was fingerprinted and this identified him as Mr Dupont de Ligonnes.
‘Nantes slaughter’
Mr Dupont de Ligonnes is suspected of murdering his wife his wife Agnès, 48, and his children, Arthur, 21, Thomas, 18, Anne, 16, and Benoît, 13, whose bodies, as well as those of the family’s two dogs, were discovered buried in the garden of the family house in Nantes in 2011.
The murders, known as the “Nantes slaughter”, deeply shocked France at the time.
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AFP/Getty Images
Police outside the Dupont de Ligonnes family home in Nantes, western France in 2011
French prosecutors previously said he killed his victims in a “methodical execution”, firing two bullets from a silenced weapon at close range into their heads, before he rolled them in lime and buried them under cement.
Mr Dupont de Ligonnes reportedly told his teenage children’s private Catholic high school that he had been transferred to a job in Australia.
And he also allegedly told friends he was a US secret agent who was being taken into a witness protection programme.
A large police operation was mounted in the Var region of southern France in January last year after witnesses reported seeing a man resembling him near a monastery.