A Dutchman has been granted permission to appeal against a decade-old rape conviction after new DNA evidence emerged that implicated the murderer of Croydon model Sally Anne Bowman in the attack.

Romano van der Dussen was jailed for 15-and-a-half years in 2005 after being found guilty of the sexual assault, two attempted rapes and robbery in the Costa del Sol resort of Fuengirola.

But he could be freed after Spain's supreme court last week accepted the DNA evidence taken from the scene of the 2003 crimes matched genetic samples taken from Mark Dixie, who brutally killed 18-year-old Miss Bowman in September 2005.

RELATED: Sally Anne Bowman's killer confesses to brutal rape 12 years after another man convicted

Pub chef Dixie, 45, was jailed for life in 2008 for raping and stabbing the model before leaving her for dead in a pool of blood outside her home in Blenheim Crescent, South Croydon.

The killer was staying in Fuengirola at the time of the sexual assaults, which all took place on the one night in the same area of the resort.

Van der Dussen has always maintained his innocence and his DNA was never matched to that found at the scene.

In a ruling dated November 12 but only published on Wednesday, Spain's supreme court authorised his appeal against one of the assaults - for which he was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison - in light of the possibility that "the perpetrator of the sexual assault and injuries suffered by the victim was a British citizen".

It comes after British police submitted a report linking DNA evidence to Dixie.

Van der Dussen has twice before requested permission to appeal his conviction, but his most recent bid in July was rejected because tests on the genetic samples were not yet complete.

PrisonLaw, an independent legal body focused on helping Dutch prisoners abroad, has since submitted the police report to the supreme court along with a confession it says Dixie provided to Van der Dussen's lawyer.

A spokesman for organisation said in June: "Mark Dixie has stated in writing during a visit by the Dutch lawyer Rachel Imamkhan of PrisonLaw in prison in Britain that he was staying in Fuengirola in September 2003 and that he remembers that he committed one of the rapes for which Van der Dussen is condemned.

"Furthermore, Dixie said he regrets that an innocent person was jailed for that rape.

"Dixie is willing to cooperate with any further interrogation by the police if the need arises."

Dixie was jailed for a minimum of 34 years for Miss Bowman's murder.