Police suspect admits he was behind Sarkozy death threats

French police seem to have "got their man" in their long-running hunt to find the identity of the person nicknamed "le corbeau" (the crow) in the French media.

A 51-year-old man taken in for questioning at the weekend has reportedly admitted that he alone was behind a series of letters and death threats sent to a number of leading politicians, including the French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

The suspect, Thierry Jérôme is, according to the weekly French newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, an unemployed husband and father who lives in the Hérault département the south of the country.

According to investigators, he's apparently "someone who is unbalanced" and a member of a local gun club.

The paper says his arrest came on Sunday following a DNA match with a sample taken for the stamp on one of the anonymous letters which had been sent from the region since the end of 2008.

That was when Sarkozy as well as several government ministers (past and present) as well as high profile media figures started receiving threatening letters, some of them accompanied by a bullet.

Over the past couple of weeks, says the paper, police have been taking DNA samples from members of local clubs in an effort to find a match and identify the suspect.

On Monday police extended Jérôme's custody although they released his wife, Ariane and are now questioned his 27-year-old daughter Angélique, to have a "clearer understanding of the character of her father".

Should Jérôme be charged, it would see the end to an investigation which has seen 12 other people taken in for questioning this year.

In March a military reservist from Montpellier was taken in and held after being "denounced" by his former girlfriend, but later released without being charged.

And at the beginning of this month police swooped on around 20 homes in l'Hérault taking 11 people in for questioning before releasing them.