FUGITIVE rapist Trevor Masters (pictured) will be brought back to Britain next week to begin his 12-year jail sentence, it was revealed last night.

Masters, of Blaenavon, sparked an international manhunt after he fled to France in August 2000 during his trial at Cardiff crown court.

He was tried for a series of assaults ranging from rape, actual bodily harm and indecent assault as well as sexual off-ences against women and children.

Masters, 50, was convicted in his absence of nine separate sexual and violent assaults on two women and two girls, aged 10 and 15, in the 1980s when he lived in Market Street, Blaenavon.

Police in the French town of Pau arrested him in the summer of 2001, after he spent almost a year on the run.

Last month he was refused his appeal against extradition to Britain. His lawyer, Claude Garcia, previously said he planned to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

But Detective Inspector Mike Jones, of Gwent Police, last night said he had been notified that all appeals by Masters have failed.

Mr Jones said Masters would be collected from France next week. He is due to appear at Cardiff crown court on Friday, March 21 "to answer the offence for which the warrant was issued in connection with his breaching of bail". He said: "He will be brought back by myself and other officers in the middle of next week from France."

Mr Jones, who has dealt with the Masters case for more than four years, expects him to lodge an appeal once he is extradited.