A martial arts expert who has been a fugitive from justice since May 2010 and is accused of strangling five people was arrested by Honduran police, authorities said Tuesday.

The spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, Melvin Duarte, told Efe that Gandhi Espinal Raudales was arrested several days ago.

In January 2010, the Central American judo champ was arrested and sent to the National Penitentiary, near Tegucigalpa, accused of five homicides, but he escaped four months later.

Prosecutor Grisella Amaya said that “the method he used in all the murders was strangulation.”

Prosecutors link Espinal Raudales to the murder of German citizen Ernst Werner Schweinfurth, 68, who was strangled with a telephone cord on Dec. 17, 2009.

Authorities also suspect him in the deaths of Dafne Ninoska Avilez and Asdrubal Zepeda Avilez, who were strangled on Jan. 7, 2010.