The man French police want to interview about the killing of the North Staffordshire student Isabel Peake has injured himself in a Portugal prison.

Sid Ahmed Rezala, 20, slashed his neck and a wrist.

He was found wounded in his cell on Monday night and was taken to the hospital wing of the jail.

Prison authorities denied it was a suicide attempt, but called it an attempt to draw attention to himself.

They say he is not badly hurt.

Thrown

Rezala was arrested in Portugal last Tuesday and is awaiting extradition to France to face charges of murdering Isabel Peake from Barlaston, and two other women.

Isabel, who was in France as part of her university course, was found next to railway lines near Limoges last October.

French police believe she was thrown from an overnight train.

But the attempt to extradite Rezala has been delayed by an administrative error.

According to Portuguese prosecutors, paperwork filed from France was incomplete.

Mr Rezala has been named as a suspect in the deaths of Miss Peake, the sleeper train murder of mother-of-two Corrine Caillaux in Dijon, eastern France, and the death of student Emilie Bazin in Amiens.

Last week he refused to co-operate with extradition efforts, a move which could lengthen delays by several weeks.

However, it is not thought the latest setback will have a significant effect on the extradition's timescale.

French prosecutors say that Mr Rezala was the last person to see Miss Peake before she plunged from a French train while travelling home to Barlaston, Staffordshire, in October last year.

Her body was found lying near the mainline Limoges-Paris track about 75 miles north of Limoges at Chabenet.

The Birmingham University French and law undergraduate's bags and personal items were found strewn up and down the line.