THE former manager of a North-East pizza shop has written to The Northern Echo from the Swiss prison cell where he is being held on suspicion of a murder he says he did not commit.

Since his extradition to Switzerland in February, Majid El Hamri has tried to kill himself twice.

He says: "I am not being detained in the name of justice or any law.

"But I am detained by force for exactly no reason whatsoever."

Mr El Hamri, from Hemlington, near Middlesbrough, is being held in connection with the killing of an elderly homosexual in the 1980s. He has not been charged.

Writing from his cell, he states: "They had 20 years of investigations and now they find the excuse to say they are still investigating.

"For how long - another century?

"Like my embassy says, this is beyond a joke.

"When I came to Switzerland to answer questions, I never believed for one moment that they were like this. They might be Swiss, but their justice is typical of a Third World country."

Mr El Hamri, who ran a pizza bar at Eaglescliffe, near Stockton, was extradited to Switzerland on suspicion of being a serial killer, though investigations have found he was not in the same country at the time of three of four linked murders.

Swiss police claim to have found one of his fingerprints in the flat of a murdered pensioner, though swabs taken from the victim do not match Mr El Hamri's DNA.

Two Swiss police inspectors have been taken off the case, it was revealed yesterday.

Mr El Hamri feels bitter that the British Government did not block his extradition.

He says: "(I hope) that in the future the British Government should check before allowing people's lives to be destroyed."

Mr El Hamri's wife, Alison, has just returned from Morocco, where she saw her husband's parents following a visit to Switzerland where she hired a lawyer to represent her husband.