Glitter faces deportation in crackdown on sex tourism

FALLEN pop star Gary Glitter is to be deported from Cambodia after renting a home in the country’s capital Phnom Penh.

Mu Sochua, the Cambodian minister of women’s affairs, said the country’s government would throw Glitter out once the British Foreign Office confirmed his 1999 conviction for downloading child pornography from the internet. Glitter, 57, has been living in Cambodia for three months.

Sochua said: "I am extremely concerned. This matter has gone to the highest level - the prime minister Hun Sen himself. At the moment interior ministry officials are checking his immigration status. Once the British Embassy confirms his conviction he will be blacklisted and deported."

The Cambodian authorities are concerned at their country’s growing reputation as a haven for sex tourists.

Children’s charities there are pressuring the authorities to crack down on the activities of foreign tourists who go to the country to have sex with children.

Gary Glitter was sentenced to four months in a British prison in 1999 for possessing indecent images of children. His vast private library of child pornography included images of children being tortured, tied up, gagged, blindfolded and being urinated on. Glitter downloaded the pornographic images from the internet including one site called The Lovers Guide To Better Child Sexual Abuse.

The children involved were as young as two. Glitter was cleared of charges of having under-age sex.

He is listed on the British sex offenders’ register under his real name of Paul Gadd.

On his release from prison, after only serving half his sentence, Glitter left Britain for Spain and then moved on to Cuba with his 26-year-old girlfriend, Yudenia Martinez, the mother of his 15-month-old son. The pop star was then banned from Cuba on the orders of Fidel Castro, the president.

Six months ago he moved into a 300-a-month air conditioned penthouse near Phnom Penh’s central market by himself.

He has been photographed by a newspaper in the company of a five-year-old girl. The girl was visiting Glitter with her mother.

The British Embassy in Cambodia is believed to have been unaware Glitter was in the country. British diplomats have been trying to encourage the Cambodian government to take a hard line in arresting and prosecuting British paedophiles.

They believe strict action would have a deterrent effect on sex tourists. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "This is a very serious problem and the embassy is working closely with the Cambodian authorities to address it."

The only Briton in jail in Cambodia for child sex offences is John Keeler, 57, from Manchester. He was jailed for three years in November 2000 for bribing girls as young as eight to perform lewd acts on video.

In Britain, Mark Towner, 58, was jailed for eight years after his wife found pictures of him with Cambodian children on his computer. He admitted having sex with a 13-year-old girl in Cambodia.

The trade in children has recently become more secretive. Whereas at one time under aged girls could be openly bought from brothels, now agents deliver them secretly to private addresses.

Child trafficking rings sell virgins of both sexes to visiting foreigners for $1000 a week. Once the children are returned to the traffickers they are tattooed with a mark which means ‘used goods’ and put to work in brothels.