Former British glam rocker Gary Glitter was freed from a Vietnamese prison on Tuesday after serving two years and nine months for child sexual molestation, the prison chief said.
He was expected to be deported from the communist country later in the day, under the terms of his 2006 sentence, but it was not clear whether he would fly straight to his home nation or seek residence in a third country.
Glitter (64), real name Paul Francis Gadd, was arrested in Vietnam in late 2005 and convicted the following year for committing obscene acts with two girls then aged 11 and 12 in the southern resort town of Vung Tau.
Britain has not announced any outstanding charges against the 1970s pop star once famed for his flamboyant bouffant wigs and silver jumpsuits, and Glitter has said he would like to move to Hong Kong or Singapore.
“He has the right to go wherever he wants,” said his lawyer, Le Thanh Kinh.
The British embassy has declined to comment on the case.
Sources at the Home Office in London said if he were to settle in his native country he would be required to sign the sex-offenders’ register.
The one-time pop star eluded waiting journalists early on Tuesday when he was spirited out of his southern Vietnamese prison before dawn, heading for Ho Chi Minh City, from where most international flights leave the country.
“He left our prison early this morning [Tuesday] and he is now already far from here,” said Tran Huu Thong, head of the Z30D Thu Duc prison in Binh Thuan province, adding that Glitter was already in the southern metropolis.
His lawyer, Kinh, said Glitter wanted to avoid international media, who showed up in their dozens for Glitter’s trial, and said: “I just got the information that he’s in Ho Chi Minh City.”
Glitter had several hits in the 1970s including I’m The Leader Of The Gang (I Am!) and Do You Wanna Touch Me?
He was arrested in Britain in 1997 after he took his computer to a store for repairs and hardcore paedophilia was spotted on the computer’s files.
He was sentenced in 1999 to four months in prison, of which he served two, after he admitted 54 charges of downloading indecent pictures.
Keen to avoid the media, Glitter reportedly moved to Cuba and later moved to Cambodia, but was permanently expelled in 2002, allegedly for trawling for underage sex, although Cambodian officials did not file charges.
Having settled in Vietnam, where a British newspaper reported he was living with an underage girl, Glitter was arrested at Ho Chi Minh City’s international airport on November 19 2005 while trying to leave for Thailand.
In March 2006 he was sentenced to three years in jail, the minimum term under Vietnamese law, which was cut by three months as part of national sentence reductions for the traditional Tet Lunar New Year in 2007.
Glitter, who paid $2 000 in compensation to the families of both victims, evaded the more serious charge of child rape, which carries a maximum penalty of death by firing squad in Vietnam.
The judge who presided over the closed trial, Hoang Thanh Tung, afterwards called Glitter “sick” and “abnormal”, detailing instances of fondling, oral sex and more disturbing sexual acts with the children.
The singer during the trial maintained his innocence, blamed a media conspiracy and claimed he was teaching the girls English, allowing them to stay overnight because they were scared of ghosts. — AFP