The 35-year-old has spent the past 11 months telling the court that he is Arthur Knight, an orphan from Ireland who has never been to the US. But on Friday Edinburgh Sheriff Court found him to be Rossi, a man wanted by US authorities in connection with two counts of rape and an allegation of sexual assault. Rossi was first arrested in October last year after being admitted to a Glasgow hospital with Covid-19. It is alleged that he faked his death in the US and fled to Scotland to avoid prosecution. Medical staff and police concluded it was Rossi after comparing his tattoos to photographs of Rossi on an Interpol red notice. A series of preliminary hearings then took place, during which Rossi fired at least six lawyers and claimed he had been tortured in prison. The hearings culminated in an identification case where he said his fingerprints had been tampered with and that he had been tattooed while he was unconscious in hospital to resemble Rossi. Speaking at the hearing to establish Rossi’s identity, Sheriff Norman McFadyen said: “I am ultimately satisfied on the balance of probabilities, from the fingerprint, photographic and tattoo evidence, taken together, supported by the evidence of change name, that Mr. Knight is indeed Nicholas Rossi, the person wanted for extradition by the United States.” The sheriff, a member of the judiciary in Scotland, said he would only be prepared to accept fingerprint evidence or headshots and photos of Rossi’s tattoos on US papers as “sufficient” to identify the wanted man. McFadyen rejected Rossi’s claim that he was fingerprinted by an NHS worker called Patrick on behalf of US prosecutors while he was in intensive care. He said: “I have no reasonable or consistent reason to doubt that the prints examined were those given by the US authorities and that they are, as they claim, the prints of Nicholas Rossi who is charged in their proceedings, and I reject Mr. Knight as to how his prints were taken while he was in the hospital… so amazing and fantastic.”
