Nicholas Rossi, an American fugitive, will be extradited from Scotland to the United States to face allegations of rape. Scotland’s justice secretary Angela Constance confirmed the extradition order last week after a court ruling in August that found no legal barrier to Rossi’s extradition. The 36-year-old was arrested at a Glasgow hospital’s Covid ward in December 2021 and has since claimed to be the victim of mistaken identity, stating that he is an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight.
Although Rossi maintained that he was wrongly identified, a court ruled in November 2021 that he was in fact Nicholas Rossi, and not Arthur Knight, which he repeatedly claimed. Despite the ruling, Rossi insisted that he was the victim of mistaken identity and alleged that he was tattooed while he was unconscious in the hospital to frame him.
In his extradition ruling, Sheriff Norman McFadyen described Rossi as “dishonest and deceitful as he is evasive and manipulative”. Mr. Bovey, Rossi’s lawyer, urged the court to refuse Rossi’s extradition or adjourn the proceedings to permit a fuller investigation of his mental health. However, three medical witnesses stated that Rossi showed no signs of acute mental illness. A GP at Saughton also cast doubt on the overall state of his health.
Authorities in the US have identified Rossi under several aliases, including Nicholas Alahverdian. Detectives in Essex also want to question Rossi in connection with an alleged rape dating back to 2017. Rossi has two weeks to appeal the decision on his extradition. In December 2019, Rossi informed media that he had late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma and only had weeks to live, but less than two years later, he turned up on a hospital ward in Glasgow during the pandemic. Several news outlets in Rhode Island reported that he had died in February 2020
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