Loik Le Priol
(Picture: Facebook)An ex-soldier with links to neo-Nazi groups has been arrested under suspicion of shooting rugby star Federico Aramburu dead in Paris.
Loik Le Priol, 27, is said to have been caught on CCTV following the assassination of 42-year-old Aramburu on Saturday night.
The former Argentine international and Glasgow Warriors star was in the French capital to watch France play England in the Six Nations.
“Le Priol was arrested in Hungary on Wednesday night following the issuing of an international warrant,” said an investigating source.
“He will now be extradited back to France as the prime suspect wanted for the murder of Federico Aramburu.”
Mr Le Priol told the Hungarian police that he was on his way to Ukraine ‘to fight the Russians’, according to investigating sources in Paris.
Three combat knives were found in his car when he was stopped in Zahony – a town on Hungary’s eastern border with Ukraine that is currently full of refugees from Ukraine.
It came as Le Priol’s girlfriend and alleged getaway driver, a 24-year-old university student identified only as Lison, pleaded her innocence.
Lison, who has been charged with being an accomplice to murder, is said to have told investigators: ‘I didn’t want it to happen like this. I acted out of instinct, and for love’.
The images identifying both suspects are said to be “extremely good,” said the source, who added that “five bullets” were fired at Aramburu.
Paris prosecutors confirmed that a suspect called Romain B. is still on the run and wanted for complicity in Aramburu’s murder.
Aramburu, who lived in the French Basque Country, was with fellow rugby star Shaun Hegarty, 38, when he was killed, but Hegarty was unharmed.
Aramburu’s family have denounced the “heinous crime” and called for police to bring those responsible to justice.
Lawyer Yann Le Bras said: “This heinous crime and his death have left his family and friends and beyond all, the world of rugby, stunned and in unspeakable pain.
‘The coming days must be devoted to the grieving of his family and to allowing the police to work calmly.”
Aramburu won 22 Argentina caps and played in the 2007 World Cup in France, scoring a try as the Pumas beat the hosts in the third-place playoff.
He played club rugby in France for Biarritz, Perpignan and Dax from 2004 to 2010, and for Glasgow Warriors in Scotland..
Since his retirement from sport, he had lived in Biarritz and worked for a tourism company.
