Twenty corpses found in Spain

The suspect may be linked to illegal cremations

A former funeral parlour employee has appeared in court in southern Spain in connection with the gruesome discovery of 20 corpses hidden around his home and car.

Officers arrested the man and searched his house, after finding bags with decomposed body parts in his car during a routine road check in the town of Ardales, near Malaga.

The man has been released without bail pending further investigations into what the Spanish police suspect is a case of unlicensed cremations.

Several people are already on trial in Malaga accused of illegally cremating 3,000 people.

Bags of bones

The 41-year-old was thought to be on his way to dispose of the bodies, which had been dead for four years, when he was stopped.

Six skulls and a number of bones were packed in rubbish bags in the boot of the car.

Police said the suspect - identified only by the initials EFB - worked as a driver for one of the companies investigated in the cremations scam.

The case, which went before the Malaga courts last year, came to light after police discovered the remains of 47 people in one of the defendants' homes.

Cut-price cremations

Prosecutors say the relatives of the dead were given ashes of random people and coffins were recycled.

The bereaved were charged at around one-seventh of the average rate for cremations.

The case is still before the court.

Spanish authorities have said the latest arrest could shed light on thousands of cases of fraud.

Earlier this year, a similar case was uncovered at a family-run crematorium in the American state of Georgia, where hundreds of bodies were stacked in storage sheds and scattered in local woods.