Paedophile jailed after manhunt tracks him to Costa del Sol

One of Britain's most wanted paedophiles who spent two years on the run in Spain has been jailed after an international manhunt.

Matthew Sammon, 46, fled the country when he was released on bail after being arrested for making and possessing child pornography in 2014.

The former roofer was caught with around 35,000 indecent images and films of children, including some which had been secretly filmed at swimming pools and leisure centres.

Police suspected he shot the videos himself while working as a first aider for Race for Life or at a scuba diving school, but this could not be proved.

He had a string of previous convictions for child sex and porn offences, including indecently assaulting a girl in 1993.

Sammon spent more than two years as a fugitive before his capture in the Costa del Sol in October.

He was seized as part of Operation Captura - a campaign to find fugitives on the run in Spain - at a fairground site in Fuengirola, where he had been living in a camper van.

Prosecutor Linda Shamel did not mention he had absconded or that there had been international campaign to track him down during his sentencing hearing on Wednesday.

Sammon, from Croydon, south London, was sentenced to two and a half years at Southwark Crown Court for six counts of making and one of possessing indecent photographs of children.

After his first arrest in 2014, Sammon admitted he had been downloading child porn for around two years, which he had carefully organised into a special filing system.

He told police his offending had "got worse and worse over time" and had become a "hoarding addiction".