Interpol arrests pedophile suspect

High-tech police work was used to track the suspect.

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — A three-year global manhunt for a Canadian schoolteacher suspected of sexually abusing Asian boys ended Friday when police raided a house in northeastern Thailand — off the usual tourist trail — and arrested Christopher Paul Neil.

Police tracked Neil to the house in Nakhon Ratchasima province that he shared with a Thai transvestite friend whose phone calls were traced by authorities.

Neil, who surrendered peacefully, was found though high-tech police work that relied on digitally unscrambled photos and tips from the public after an unprecedented worldwide appeal via the Internet.

“I think he knew we were coming,” said police Col. Paisal Luesomboon, who was on the five-member police team that made the arrest. “He knew that there was an arrest warrant issued and that his face was posted everywhere.”

He said Neil, 32, acknowledged being the man they were seeking, but didn’t comment on whether he was the person depicted in about 200 Internet photos having sex with a dozen boys between ages 6 and 12.

Only 10 days earlier, Interpol had issued the appeal to identify the man whose face had been digitally obscured by swirling part of the original photos.

After German police computer experts were able to reverse the process, making the face recognizable, some photos of the man were publicly circulated, and hundreds of people responded with tips on his identity, leading to Neil’s arrest.

“Let all international criminals and fugitives be put on notice that Interpol, its police partners in 186 member countries, the public and the Internet present new and powerful possibilities for hunting them down wherever they might try to hide,” Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said in a statement issued in France, where the international police agency is based.

After his arrest, Neil was driven to Bangkok, where — in handcuffs and with a blue shirt draped over his head — officers led him into national police headquarters. He made no comments to waiting reporters.

He remained silent and unsmiling when he was presented to journalists at a news conference, where the shirt was removed from his head but his eyes remained hidden behind sunglasses.

Neil was charged Friday with detention of a child under 15 without parental consent, punishable by up to three years in prison; taking a child under 15 from his parents without consent, punishable by five to 20 years; and sexual abuse of a child under 15, punishable by up to 10 years.

The charges are based on the alleged abuse of a 9-year-old boy in Bangkok in 2003, but police say at least three other boys are believed to have had sex with him, and more charges may be filed.

He said five of nearly 400 e-mails received in response to its search put authorities on the suspect’s trail.

It was the first time Interpol went to the public in search of a suspect, Louboutin said.

Neil lived in Thailand from 2002 to early 2004, police said. Three Thai youths, aged 9, 13 and 14 at the time of their alleged abuse, contacted police Wednesday after seeing Neil’s photograph on television, claiming he had paid them for oral sex in 2003, said police Maj. Gen. Wimol Powintara.

Neil, of Maple Ridge, British Columbia, had taught at schools in Thailand, South Korea and Vietnam since 2000.

He suddenly left his most recent teaching job in South Korea last week on a one-way ticket for Thailand as investigators closed in.