A DATE has been set for the trial of a Spanish man accused of the rape and murder of Launceston schoolgirl Caroline Dickinson.

Francisco Arce Montes, who was arrested in Florida, will appear in court in the French town of Rennes on June 2, the AFP news agency reported this morning.

Caroline,13, was killed while on a school trip in July 1996.

She had been sexually assaulted and suffocated in a youth hostel in the Brittany town of Pleine-Fougeres.

Arce Montes, 52, was arrested in Miami in March 2001 after allegedly breaking into a woman's bedroom and committing 'a lewd act. '

But state authorities there decided to drop the case against him in order to facilitate his extradition to France.

He had been apprehended when a US police officer on holiday in Europe read an account of the Dickinson case and made the connection with the arrest in Florida of Arce Montes, a former waiter.

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