Brazil rejects Straw's return bid

Craig Alden is in jail near Brasilia

A request supported by the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to allow a UK citizen imprisoned in Brazil to return to Britain has been rejected.

Craig Alden is in jail near the capital Brasilia after being sentenced to 48 years for alleged abuse of children.

Alden, 34, of Warboys, Cambridgeshire, was arrested in July 2002 for offences against children under his care in the Abrigo Home orphanage.

On Tuesday the Foreign Office said the a call to return him had been rejected.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said Alden had put in a request, supported by Mr Straw, for a Presidential Expulsion.

This would have allowed Alden to return to the UK where he may have continued to serve his sentence in a British prison.

No defence

But this move was rejected by the Brazilian authorities, the spokeswoman said.

Alden originally moved to Brazil in 1987 to set up the orphanage, having first raised money for the project in Cambridgeshire.

No defence was offered at his trial because of an error made by his lawyer, his supporters say.

Alden's case has been supported by Fair Trials Abroad - which believes that he is innocent and that he has been denied basic human rights.

A spokeswoman said Alden, who founded an orphanage in Planaltina near Brasilia in 1991, had not been given the opportunity to properly defend himself at his trial and should be freed from jail immediately.

She said Alden, who is married to a Brazilian woman and has a seven-year-old son, was arrested in 2002 after being accused of abusing or neglecting five children at the orphanage.