Waris Dirie

Vienna, March 11: A best-selling author and former model who moved hundreds of miles across Europe to escape a stalker was tracked down and attacked by the obsessed man, police said yesterday.

Waris Dirie left her home in Cardiff for a flat in Vienna but, just a week later, the man who had terrorised her for months in Britain turned up at her door.

Dirie, 40, who wrote the best-selling autobiography Desert Flower and its sequel Desert Dawn, was thrown to the ground and beaten up. Austrian police said she was not seriously hurt but was “extremely distressed”.

Somalia-born Dirie, a “face” of Revlon skin-care products, once posed for a Pirelli calendar, worked alongside supermodels, including Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer and appeared in the 1987 Bond film The Living Daylights.

She moved to Vienna from her home in Cardiff to get away from the Portuguese man, who is 26. The stalker, named by Austrian police only as Paulo A, claimed the pair were in love and were in a stable relationship, police said.

Harald Hofmayer, a police spokesman in Vienna, said: “This man is psychologically disturbed and followed her here to confront her in her new flat. He was hoping for an element of surprise and it worked. The victim was so shocked that she allowed him to get past her and into the flat.”

Hofmayer said the stalker “went mad” when Dirie refused to accept his advances and he threw her to the ground. He rained blows on her as she lay on the floor, and he smashed up the flat. The stalker ran off when the author began shouting for help. However, police arrested him later when he tried to get into the flat for a second time.

Paulo A was believed to have met the author about seven months ago when his brother did some odd jobs at her home in Cardiff.