Nov 19, 2005 — HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam police have arrested British rocker Gary Glitter on a child molestation charge, a state-run newspaper reported on Sunday.
The Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper quoted immigration police at Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat airport as saying Glitter — whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd — was arrested while trying to board a plane to Bangkok on Saturday morning.
Immigration police at the airport declined to comment.
The state-run youth newspaper said police escorted Glitter back to the southern resort town of Vung Tau where, according to state-run Vietnamese media, he had taken home several girls aged 15 or under.
On Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said police wanted to question the 61-year-old rocker about the allegations, which first surfaced in the British tabloid press.
"If we have evidence of a child sexual violation, very strict legal measures would be applied," Dung said.
On Friday police launched a formal investigation against Glitter.
The age of consent in Vietnam is 16 and sex with minors is punishable by up to 12 years in jail.
Glitter was sentenced to four months in jail in Britain in 1999 after being found guilty of storing more than 4,000 images of child pornography on the hard drive of his computer.
After his release, he left Britain for Cuba and then later turned up in Phnom Penh.
Child rights activists hounded him out of Cambodia twice and have had his name put on an entry blacklist, although Glitter filed lawsuits last year fighting the deportation orders.
Vietnamese newspapers have reported Glitter had been in Vietnam for about a year.
Copyright 2005 Reuters News Service.
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