Brit claiming to be 18-year army veteran facing life in prison ‘for kidnapping millionaire hotel and casino owner’

AN Englishman who claims to be a decorated war hero is facing life imprisonment in France if he is found guilty of kidnapping a multi-millionaire hotel and restaurant owner.

Philip Dutton, 47, is said to have been involved in a well-organised plot to extort Jacqueline Veyrac’s fortune.

The 76-year-old magnate was bundled into a van on October 24th in the glamorous Riviera resort of Cannes, where she owns the fabled Grand Hotel.

Two days later, Mrs Veyrac was spotted bound and gagged in the back of the same vehicle, and then released.

Her family did not pay a ransom, but police found a note demanding the equivalent of millions of pounds, said the Nice public prosecutor, Jean-Michel Pretre.

Six alleged kidnappers have since been arrested, with Dutton among those facing charges of ‘kidnapping and sequestration in an organised group’, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

His lawyer Benjamin Charlier told Nice Matin newspaper that the Liverpool-born Dutton claimed to be a British Army veteran who served for 18 years in numerous theatres of war including Afghanistan and Iraq.

While in Kabul, the Afghan capital, in 2011, Dutton’s car rolled over ‘A German mine left over from the Second War,’ he told his lawyer.

Dutton said he suffered second and third degree burns over 33 per cent of his body, and spent three years in military hospitals.

The accident marked the end of Dutton’s career, and his marriage to a Bulgarian national fell apart.