A man has been jailed for murdering a restaurant manager in Ayr almost 25 years ago.

Ansar Shah, 38, was stabbed to death at the car park of the Armaan Restaurant in Seafield Road, on October 4, 1993.

Jagtar Singh, 51, was convicted of murder at the High Court in Glasgow on Thursday and sentenced to 17 years in prison.

The trial heard Mr Shah was stabbed three times - twice in the heart and once in the lung.

There was a fight in the car park after midnight involving members of staff from the restaurant and others including Jagtar Singh, who is known as Tony.

Following the verdict, detective inspector Mark Henderson said: "Jagtar Singh thought that he had managed to evade justice for almost quarter of a century after carrying out this brutal attack on Ansar Shah in the early hours of the night.

"This cowardly individual did everything he could to try to escape the consequences of his actions.

"He fled to England the following morning and later set up a new life in France, before being arrested in Germany in November 2017 on a European Arrest Warrant and brought back to Scotland to face justice.

"Police Scotland undertook a joint operation with a number of partners including COPFS and law enforcement colleagues across Europe.

"The operation was co-ordinated from the Scottish Crime Campus, which houses a number of specialist departments, including one dedicated to working on unresolved murder cases.

"We hope that after almost twenty five years of anguish and suffering, the Shah family who have always acted with dignity are able to try to take some comfort from the fact that the man responsible is now behind bars and they have the answers they have been looking for, for all those years.

"Police Scotland remains committed to pursuing those responsible for the most serious crimes including murder, regardless of how long ago it took place and regardless of geography."

Singh had claimed he acted in self-defence, but that was rejected by the jury.

The jury has heard that a cold case investigation into the murder was launched in January 2015.

Eventually Singh was traced to France and detained in Frankfurt Airport on November, 2017.

When he was told by police he was returning to Scotland on a plane he told them: "it's no problem, fighting, fighting" and pulled up his jumper to reveal what appeared to be a scar on his abdomen.

He was arrested and charged with murder when the plane landed at Glasgow Airport.