A SUSPECTED serial rapist said "I'm not going to see the light of day for this, am I?" shortly after his arrest, a police officer told a court yesterday.

PC Malcolm Smithers said Antoni Imiela, originally from Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, made the remark as he smoked a cigarette in the exercise yard of a police station in Folkestone, Kent.

Just over an hour earlier, the railway worker had been arrested after his car was stopped on to the hard shoulder of the M20 motorway, Maidstone Crown Court was told.

Mr Imiela denies nine counts of rape against eight women and girls who were allegedly attacked between November 2001 and October 2002 in Kent, Surrey, London and Hertfordshire.

The 49-year-old, of Appledore, near Ashford, Kent, also denies kidnap, indecent assault and attempted rape of a ten-year-old girl, in Birmingham, on November 21, 2002.

The court heard that traffic police made the arrest late on December 2, 2002, after his Citroen Xantia was spotted.

At the police station, he was allowed into the exercise yard to have a cigarette, accompanied by PC Smithers.

He said: "It was while he was smoking that he said 'I am not going to see the light of day for this, am I?'."

But Simon Russell-Flint, defending, said to the police officer about the moment he asked Mr Imiela to sign the note: ''You didn't do that at the very earliest opportunity, did you?"

Mr Russell-Flint continued: "What I am going to suggest is what he did say was that 'I'd never see the light of day for this'. A small difference but perhaps important."

The officer replied: "That's a small difference and the notes I have made are to the best of my recollection."

The trial continues.