A BRITISH criminal thug, who spent five months on the run after escaping a Portuguese prison using a ladder, has finally been caught.

Mark Roscaleer was seized by cops on Spain’s Costa Blanca while he was brazenly riding around in a Porsche.

The violent convict was caught on CCTV scaling a 20-foot jail wall – at the Vale de Judeus Prison in Alcoentre near Lisbon – last September.

Roscaleer was part of a mass jail escape along with four other inmates.

The British thug was caught with one of the other four escapees – convicted Argentinian bank robber and suspected child kidnapper and killer Rodolfo Lohrmann, on Thursday.

Roscaleer reportedly attempted to resist arrest and left several officers injured.

The thug had been jailed in June 2020, at an Algarve court, and was serving nine years behind bars for kidnapping and robbery.

He was found guilty of torturing a victim by putting a battery cable clamp on his intimate areas on 2 October, 2018, with an accomplice named as Robert George Anthony Wood, then 20.

The British pair were extradited after they were discovered in Spain.

This torture session, at an abandoned house on the Algarve, led to the terrified 45-year-old victim revealing where he kept thousands of pounds in cash at home.

State prosecutors accused them of robbing the victim at gunpoint before submitting him to “cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment” to hand over the cash, and the duo pleaded guilty.

Roscaleer and Lohrmann – who had reportedly been regarded as the brains behind the 7 September, 2024, prison break – were said to have been working together in the same criminal gang after their escape, according to local media.

The prisoners reportedly used a ladder to scale the jail wall and were assisted by accomplices who were waiting outside for them in a small black Mercedes.

They escaped in the morning but cops did not notice their disappearance until lunchtime, it was reported.

A member of the prison guard corps told Expresso at the time: “They went out of the cells into the courtyard and then, with a ladder hidden outside, they climbed over the six-metre-high wall and escaped”.

The Runcorn, Cheshire-born criminal is now facing extradition to Portugal along with Lohrmann, nicknamed “El Ruso” or “The Russian”.

Portugal’s police force said: “Both fugitives were subject to international arrest warrants issued by the competent judicial authority and were listed in Interpol’s red notice.”

This capture has meant all five of the criminal escapees have been found and are back behind bars.

Portuguese national Fabio Loureiro was arrested in Morocco nearly a month after he absconded.

Another Portuguese national, Fernando Ferreira, was discovered in the north of the country 48 days after he escaped and Georgian Shergili Farjiani held in Italy.

Portugal’s Justice Minister Rita Judice described the recapture of Roscaleer and Lohrmann overnight as “very gratifying”.

She said: “It’s very gratifying to see that, five months after the escape of five dangerous inmates from Vale de Judeus, they have all been recaptured.”

Roscaleer has also made headlines in August 2019 after he tried to escape another prison in Lisbon.

The criminal was said to have smashed his cell window and smothered his body in oil – in a bid to squeeze through bars he planned to saw through.

Guards are understood to have thwarted his jailbreak around 11pm on 18 August, 2019, after catching him red-handed when they heard strange noises coming from his cell.

He was also jailed for four years at Chester Crown Court in March 2014 after admitting to aggravated burglary at an Ellesmere Port pub with an accomplice.

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