Chinese police has captured a man wanted in connection with theft and rape since 1993 when he disappeared after the crimes were committed on the Beijing-Moscow international trains.

Zhang Wenmin, 48, was seized on May 27 in a residential building at the Minhang District of Shanghai, local police said on Friday.

Police had tracked him since May 23 after they received an anonymous tip off that he had entered Shanghai from abroad using another name, said a spokesman with the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau.

Zhang, who had lived in the Chaoyang District of Beijing, was suspected of involvement in many theft and rape cases reported on the trains in 1993, the spokesman said.

Zhang moved abroad from Moscow after he was listed as wanted by the Ministry of Public Security in 1993, and his suspected accomplice, Miao Binglin, was sentenced to death on charges of robbery by the Beijing Municipal Higher People's Court in December, 1994, the spokesman said.

Zhang had also been convicted of theft in 1982, he said.

Zhang had been taken to Beijing by the Beijing Railway Public Security Bureau, he said.

(Xinhua News Agency June 2, 2007)