The man (dressed in black) with the Spanish police. (Image Policia Nacional)

ONE of the IRA's most senior commanders in the Republic has been arrested in Spain for child sex abuse.

A spokesman for Spain’s National Police confirmed officers detained the fugitive as he was wanted on a warrant for four sexual assaults on a minor.

“The detainee was the subject of four arrest warrants issued last January by a judge in Dublin.”

The crimes are said to have happened in the early nineties.

The officers who arrested the suspect at an undisclosed location belonged to a specialist Madrid-based anti-fugitives unit and a local unit specialising in combating violent crime

The suspect had been living in south Dublin.

Officers detained him in Alicante on the Costa Blanca last night and he is now in custody.

The suspect is a very senior Republican figure who was a very prominent Sinn Fein activist in the 1980s and 1990s.

Originally from the North and holding a British passport, the suspect fled the Republic when he became the focus of detectives investigating the killing of Det Garda Jerry McCabe.

Officers wanted to speak to him about the authorisation of the robbery which led to the shooting dead of Det Gda McCabe.

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