Most wanted anti-abortion activist nabbed

Most wanted anti-abortion activist nabbed
Reuters

MAR 30: French police arrested US anti-abortion activist James Kopp, one of the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives, in the western region of Brittany on Thursday, a police spokesman said.

Kopp, wanted for the 1998 killing of abortion doctor Barnett Slepian in New York state, had false identity papers when he was seized in Dinan, a town South of the Channel Port of St Malo, the spokesman told Reuters.

Kopp, who disappeared after the killing and was reported last year to have been travelling in Britain, had been under surveillance, the spokesman added without giving details.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced the arrest earlier on Thursday in Washington but had no further details. A news conference was due to be held later in the day in Buffalo, New York, where the investigation has been based.

The US Embassy in Paris referred all questions about Kopp to the FBI in Washington.

Kopp, an abortion foe, was wanted for allegedly killing Slepian at the doctor's home in Amherst, New York, on Oct 23, 1998.

Slepian, 52, an obstetrician-gynecologist, was shot by a sniper as he stood in the kitchen of his home in the Buffalo suburb of Amherst, talking with his wife and one of his four sons.

A federal grand jury in New York state indicted Kopp in October 2000 on charges of murdering a Buffalo doctor.

The Glasgow Sunday Herald newspaper in Scotland reported last December that Kopp had been travelling extensively in England and Scotland since the killing and was thought to have contacted anti-abortion groups there.