Image caption Ms Visser is seen here playing in the European Women's Volleyball Championships in 2009 
 
 Spanish police believe the murders of former Dutch volleyball star Ingrid Visser and her partner in south-eastern Spain may have been business-related. 
 
 Their bodies were found in a shallow grave in a lemon grove, two weeks after they disappeared in the region. 
 
 An ex-director of a Spanish volleyball club is among three people arrested. 
 
 Murcia's police chief told reporters there appeared to have been a business disagreement between the couple and the suspects. 
 
 Ms Visser, 35, disappeared along with her partner Lodewijk Severein, 57, on 13 May, shortly after after checking into a hotel in the city of Murcia. 
 
 They were supposed to meet a doctor the next day, but failed to turn up, and the authorities were alerted. Their rental car was found on a city street more than a week later. 
 
 Volunteers plastered the walls of the city with posters appealing for information about the missing couple. 
 
 The search dominated the Dutch media. Ms Visser was a popular player, who held the record for the number of appearances for the national side, the BBC's Anna Holligan reports from The Hague. 
 
 The couple's bodies were found in a grove on Sunday evening, a day after police arrested the suspects in the city of Valencia, to the north. 
 
 Their investigation led them to a house in Molina de Segura, a town outside Murcia, and the shallow grave nearby. 
 
 One of the suspects was named by Spanish media as Juan Cuenca Lorente, 36, former director of Murcia's volleyball team. Ms Visser played for the team from 2009 to 2011. 
 
 The other two suspects are Romanian men. 
 
 Murcia's chief of police, Cyril Duran, told reporters that there had been "certain business disagreements" between the murdered couple and the three men under arrest, the local newspaper La Opinion de Murcia reports. 
 
 No details of the disagreements were given, the national daily El Pais reports. ||||| ««« previous next »»» Arrests as bodies of missing Dutch couple found in Spain Spanish police have arrested at least one person following the discovery of what is thought to be the bodies of missing Dutch international volleyball player Ingrid Visser and her partner Lodewijk Severin. The bodies were found buried in a shallow grave in a lemon grove close to a house in the village of Alquerías, some 12 kilometres from Murcia, local media reported. 
 
 
 
 Indentification still has to be confirmed by dna but the bodies 'are extremely tall which is a good indication it is the missing couple,' a police spokesman told the Dutch media Appointments The couple disappeared in Murcia on May 13 and police found no trace of them since they checked into their hotel. Their hire car was later found on a Murcia street. Visser's family alerted the police after the couple failed to turn up for an appointment in the Netherlands. They also failed to meet a hospital appointment in Spain where some reports say they were due for fertility treatment. Spanish police are keeping details of the probe secret 'in the interests of their investigation', news agency ANP said. 
 
 
 
 Raid However, police did say they raided an apartment in Murcia on Friday where they found evidence of a violent crime. One man was then arrested. 
 
 
 
 Reports that two others, possibly Romanian nationals, have also been picked up are untrue, Nos television quoted Spanish police as saying. However, RTL says police have told it two other men were picked up in Valencia on Monday and are aged 60 and 47. 
 
 
 
 
 
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 Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. comments powered by Disqus ||||| A suspect in the murder of an 11-year-old Dutch schoolboy 20 years ago has been arrested in Spain after a Europe-wide manhunt triggered by the Netherlands’ largest ever DNA testing programme. 
 
 Jos Brech, a former scout leader and playgroup worker, was detained on Sunday afternoon, police in southern Limburg province said, adding that the 55-year-old “was taken into custody and will be returned to the Netherlands”. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nicky Verstappen, who disappeared from a campsite in 1998. Photograph: Police Handout 
 
 Dutch authorities placed Brech on Europol’s list of the continent’s most wanted fugitives last week after announcing significant evidence that they said amounted to a important breakthrough in the case. 
 
 Investigators said advanced analysis had revealed Brech’s DNA was a “perfect one-for-one match” with traces found on the body of Nicky Verstappen, who was reported missing from a summer camp near the German border on 10 August 1998. 
 
 De Telegraaf newspaper posted a video of Spanish police arresting Brech near “a kind of commune” outside the village of Castellterçol, about 30 miles north of Barcelona, reportedly while he was out collecting firewood. 
 
 The paper said it had been called on Saturday by a Dutch national visiting the isolated, wooded area who had recognised Brech from police photographs. 
 
 “The witness had spoken to Brech on several occasions and had specific information,” Telegraaf crime reporter Marcel Vink told the Dutch national broadcaster NOS. “He wanted to do his civic duty, and had details I could reasonably check.” 
 
 Dutch media reported that Brech, the chief suspect in an unsolved murder that has held the Netherlands in thrall for two decades, had been living partly under canvas and partly in an abandoned building on the site. Brech is a survival expert used to living for extended periods in the wild. 
 
 
 
 Johan Mees, a fellow bushcraft enthusiast who knew Brech well and found his laptop in a cabin he had used earlier this year in the mountainous Vosges region of France, told NOS that in the weeks before his disappearance the suspect had carried out several online searches for deserted villages in Spain. 
 
 Nicky’s body, which showed signs of sexual assault, was found in woodland a few miles from the camp in the Brunssummerheide nature reserve the day after his disappearance. Despite an intensive and heavily publicised manhunt at the time, police failed to identify a suspect. 
 
 After recent advances in DNA analysis, Dutch authorities appealed in May last year for about 20,000 men in the Limburg area to come forward and provide samples for a mass testing programme. Almost 15,000 did so. 
 
 Brech, who left the Netherlands last October and in February told his family he was on an extended wilderness hiking trip in the Vosges region, was not among those to volunteer. 
 
 New evidence prompts Europe-wide hunt for 1998 murder suspect Read more 
 
 But the DNA of a close relative showed enough similarities with the 1998 sample to flag him as a potential suspect. He was formally reported missing in April, and after a search of his home forensic scientists successfully lifted DNA from his pyjamas. 
 
 It also emerged that Brech, who at the time of Nicky’s death lived eight miles away from the campsite, had been questioned three times during the inquiry – including two days after the murder, when he was stopped close to the crime scene after midnight. But although his name was recorded, he was never considered a suspect. 
 
 A video released by the Dutch crime watch TV show Opsporing Verzocht said Brech, who was briefly a suspect in a separate 1985 sexual assault case, was an experienced woodsman and survivalist who frequently used natural hiding places, mountain huts and caves for shelter when on his treks. 
 
 “This is someone who often takes a long time to respond to emails, does not seek contact often and, because he has no mobile phone or social media accounts, us used to being unreachable for long periods,” police said last week.
– A double murder in the world of volleyball is dominating the news in Spain and the Netherlands, and Spanish police say the whole affair could be business-related. Dutch volleyball star Ingrid Visser and her partner, Lodewijk Severein, went missing shortly after arriving in Murcia, Spain, earlier this month. On Sunday their bodies were found in a lemon grove, buried in a shallow grave. Three suspects were arrested the previous day; among them: Juan Cuenca Lorente, the 36-year-old former director of Murcia's volleyball club, which Visser, a popular Dutch player, played for from 2009 to 2011. Police say Lorente and the couple had some sort of business disagreement, though no specifics were released. As for what Visser, 35, and Severein, 57, were doing in Spain, the BBC reports that they were supposed to see a doctor there on May 14 but never showed up for the appointment; the Telegraph and Dutch News report that they were to undergo fertility treatment.