Police in Thailand arrested the world’s most wanted paedophile this morning, ending a worldwide manhunt that began when Interpol unscrambled his face in digitally altered online images of child rape.

Suspected paedophile gave advice on web porn

Christopher Paul Neil, a 32 year old Canadian, fled to Thailand on Tuesday, abandoning a teaching job in South Korea as the net closed around him. An unprecedented appeal by Interpol to identify him drew 350 responses from around the world.

“Bingo! We got him,” said police Maj. Gen. Wimol Powintara after Mr Neil was arrested in Nakhon Ratchasima, 150 miles north east of Bangkok. Residents said they had seen him near the home of a Thai man accused of helping him meet young boys in the past.

On Thursday a Thai arrest warrant was issued against Mr Neil for abusing one of three Thai boys who came forward after his image appeared in the local media. He allegedly bought oral sex from the children, then aged 9, 13 and 14, in 2003.

On that charge he faces up to 20 years in a Thai jail. Canada, which prosecutes its citizens for child abuse committed abroad, is also seeking his extradition. The Interpol investigation began when 200 pictures depicting the rape and abuse of 12 Asian boys, some possibly as young as 6 years old, appeared on the internet with the abuser’s face digitally obscured by a swirl pattern.

Most of the crimes depicted are believed to have been committed in Vietnam and Cambodia, but Mr Neil has also worked as a teacher in Thailand and travelled extensively in Asia.

According to his MySpace profile he has “been kicking around Asia for the past five years, teaching mainly and finding other forms of mischief.” “

I love teaching, can’t get enough of it really,” he wrote.

Mr Neil once trained in a Catholic seminary in Canada but the priests there reportedly felt that he “lacked a moral backbone.” He later worked as a youth worker before moving to Asia. The region is a magnet for paedophiles due to its poverty and often weak law enforcement.

Experts believe Mr Neil may have posted the pictures on the internet in an effort to gain credibility with networks which organize child abuse. According to Rosalind Prober of Beyond Boarders, a Canadian Organisation that combats child sex tourism, many offenders use teaching as a cover for their activities.

“The children are sitting ducks. This is their teacher. This is someone you trust and tells you what to do,” she said. “You very quickly get trapped. There is such a level of control and power by a teacher. It’s multiplied when it comes to a foreign teacher.” She published a conversation conducted on the internet by two Western teachers in the region.

“I am having a wonderful time with them sexually. Some of them are very interesting. There is never a dull moment,” wrote one of them. “Last night, four boys spent the night and I like all four of them.”

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