Cambodian police said on Tuesday a suspected serial paedophile being hunted by Interpol across Asia was a Canadian national called Christopher Paul Neil, born in 1975.
Keo Vanthan, deputy director of Interpol offices in the impoverished South-east Asian nation, said Neil had visited Cambodia before leaving for Vietnam, but had no further details.
”We have issued an alert to all our international borders,” Keo Vanthan told Reuters, although he added that Cambodia did not yet have enough evidence against Neil to issue an arrest warrant.
Interpol said on Monday the suspect, code-named ”Vico”, was believed to have fled to Thailand last week from South Korea where he had been teaching English.
Investigators have been trying for three years to track down the man after German police discovered the first of 200 photographs on the internet in which he was shown abusing 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, the police organisation released an image of the suspect taken by security cameras at Bangkok airport last Thursday after he flew in from Seoul. He looks significantly older and balder.
Thai police said the hunt for him was on.
National police spokesperson Pongsapat Pongcharoen said Interpol had contacted the Thai police about the man. ”So far we don’t have clear evidence to say it is the same man. We were told the man caught on the camera might be the same guy they are looking for. We are looking for him.” – Reuters