ATHENS – For nine months, Greek police were on the lookout for convicted fugitive Christos Pappas, the former second-in-command of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, across a number of countries but found in rubbish in Athens where he was.

Pappas was arrested after being found in the Athens apartment of a woman who said he was visiting although she now faces charges of harboring a fugitive as police closed their manhunt.

They looked through rubbish for evidence of where he was staying, said Kathimerini, before closing in on him in a neighborhood in the capital where he was taken into custody.

Police had looked for Pappas in Albania, Belgium, Cyprus, Italy and Serbia, while also searching for him in Greece, the paper said, the Greek-Ukrainian woman who was charged with hiding him not among his 300 closest relations who had been part of their investigation.

Clues didn't emerge until the few days before he was arrested but the paper didn't say what was in the rubbish that led police to believe where he was staying for certain.

The hierarchy of the party was jailed in October, 2020 but he went on the run as Greek law doesn't require people to be in court for their sentencing and he bolted after the jail terms were given after convictions for operating a criminal gang.