A man arrested on suspicion of the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence has been released on police bail.
The 27-year-old, who has never been held in connection with the killing before and is not one of the five men previously named as suspects, was arrested at work in south London yesterday morning.
He was questioned by officers throughout the day but released late last night. He has to return to a south London police station on January 14th.
The arrest was seen as a significant breakthrough in the eight-year police investigation into 18-year-old Stephen's death.
The failure of the Metropolitan Police to bring his killers to justice has been a major source of frustration and embarrassment for the force and a damning official report into the initial murder inquiry branded the Met "institutionally racist".
In July this year the present Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, said that he knew who killed Stephen.
Scotland Yard said of yesterday's arrest: "This step is part of an ongoing and vibrant investigation."
A-level student Stephen was stabbed and fatally wounded when he and his friend, Duwayne Brooks, were attacked by a gang of white youths in Eltham, south east London, in April 1993.
Soon after the murder, five men - brothers Neil and Jamie Acourt, David Norris, Gary Dobson and Luke Knight - were arrested.
But proceedings against Neil Acourt and Knight were later discontinued by the Crown Prosecution Service following a meeting with the senior investigating officer.
Stephen's parents, Neville and Doreen Lawrence, took up a private prosecution against the five following the CPS's decision, but the case against Jamie Acourt and Norris was dropped at the committal stage.
Neil Acourt, Knight and Dobson eventually stood trial for murder at the Old Bailey in April 1996.
A week after the start of proceedings, the jury was ordered to find the defendants not guilty after the judge decided Brooks's evidence was unreliable.
As the law stands now, they cannot be tried again for the same crime.
In February 1997 an inquest into Stephen's death ended with the jury deciding that the teenager had been "unlawfully killed in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths".
PA