A suspected rapist mentioned to have faked his personal loss of life whereas on the run from the FBI and dwelling in Scotland has made a weird tv look to insist he’s not the person detectives are looking.
Nicholas Rossi, also called Nicholas Alahverdian, burst into tears throughout an interview with NBC programme Dateline when requested what he would say to individuals who believed he was Alahverdian.
The drama got here a day after Rossi failed to seem at his newest extradition listening to after an “altercation” in his jail cell, Edinburgh Sheriff Court was advised.
He has been preventing efforts to ship him again to the US, the place authorities in Utah have accused him of a 2008 intercourse offence. Prosecutors say he’s from the state of Rhode Island in New England, and fled the US in 2017.
The 35-year-old, who seems in public sporting an oxygen masks, claims to be Arthur Knight, an Irish orphan and a sufferer of mistaken identification who has by no means been to America.
Last November, after months of courtroom hearings, Sheriff Norman McFadyen dominated that Rossi was certainly the person US authorities have been searching for in reference to rape and sexual assault costs.
In a narrative described by NBC as “stranger than fiction”, it has been alleged Rossi faked his personal loss of life in 2020 and fled to the UK to evade prosecution.
He was arrested in late 2021 after being handled in intensive take care of Covid within the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow underneath the identify Knight and claiming to be an educational tutor. He was re-arrested in January 2022.
The suspect additionally goes by the names Nicholas Alahverdian and Arthur Knight, denying he’s Rossi
(PA Wire)
From tattoos on his physique, police and hospital workers initially recognized him as Rossi. Interpol issued a pink discover – a request for arrest – with photos of the wished man, together with photographs of his tattoos and his fingerprints.
On Thursday, Sheriff McFadyen advised the courtroom he would permit two additional weeks for knowledgeable studies to be acquired, and Rossi was remanded in custody till 22 May.
Speaking alongside his spouse, Miranda Knight, Rossi angrily advised NBC he was Arthur Knight.
He appeared to strive standing up, slumping again into his chair, to show that he was unable to stroll.
“I am not Nicholas Alahverdian. I do not know how to make this clearer,” he mentioned behind his oxygen masks.
“We were once a normal family, but thanks to the media our lives have been interrupted.
“And we’d like privacy and I would like to go back to being a normal husband, but I can’t because I can’t breathe, I can’t walk.”
He has worn the oxygen masks after practically dying of Covid final 12 months.
When requested whether or not it was all an act, he mentioned: “That is a low blow, that is a right low blow.”
US authorities say Rossi is an alias utilized by Alahverdian, who has been charged in reference to a Utah rape.
Authorities in Rhode Island say Alahverdian can also be wished of their state for failing to register as a intercourse offender.
The FBI has mentioned he additionally faces fraud costs in Ohio, the place he was convicted of sex-related costs in 2008.
In 2020, he claimed he had late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma and had weeks to stay.
