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BANGKOK - Interpol identified a suspected serial paedophile being hunted across Asia yesterday as Christopher Paul Neil, a Canadian born in 1975 and now believed to be in hiding in Bangkok.
Panaspong Sirawongse of Interpol's regional offices in Thailand said Neil, whose digitally swirled face in internet photos was unscrambled by German police computer experts, had taught at an international school in Bangkok in 2003-04.
Thailand's immigration, crime suppression and child crime police divisions were involved in the hunt for Neil, who entered the country last week from South Korea after Interpol's unprecedented release of his picture, Panaspong said.
"They are also looking for children he abused and took photos with. There were three boys ... One boy has been identified and is being sought."
Keo Vanthan, deputy director of Interpol in neighbouring Cambodia, where police say Neil was photographed sexually abusing small boys, said border authorities had been alerted in case he tried to sneak across the border.
Investigators have been trying to track down Neil for three years after German police discovered photographs on the internet showing him raping 12 young boys in Vietnam and Cambodia.
His face was disguised with a swirly digital pattern, but experts at Germany's BKA federal crime office managed to unscramble it.
The cleaned-up images, showing a white man with receding black hair, were posted on Interpol's website a week ago.
On Monday, Interpol released an image of the suspect taken by security cameras at Bangkok airport last Thursday after he flew in from Seoul, where he had also been teaching.
In the Thai immigration photograph, he looks significantly older and balder and is wearing glasses.
Bangkok-based Interpol officer Michael Moran said South Korean police were investigating whether Neil had committed any offences there before fleeing.
"It is no accident that this man was working at a school," he said.
"It is my understanding that he just didn't turn up for work after we published the photographs on the internet last week. At this point all we can say is he's in Bangkok," he added.
Neil was identified by information provided by five sources on three different continents.
- Reuters
