Gary Glitter banned from Philippines

By Charles Kelly

17 May 2008

The Daily Record reports that “paedophile Gary Glitter is running out of places to hide as he prepares to leave jail in Vietnam”.

British police have sent warnings about the former pop star turned pervert, who was jailed for molesting two girls aged 11 and 12, to other countries in south-east Asia.

This week officials in the Philippines announced that they had banned the 64-year-old beast from their country for life as an "undesirable alien".

Gary Glitter, whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd, fled Britain in 2000 after serving a four-month jail term for possessing pornographic images of children.

After trying unsuccessfully to move to Cuba, Glitter went to Cambodia, but was deported after officials branded him "a threat to the security of the country and the national image of Cambodia".

Glitter moved to Vietnam, where he was arrested in 2005 and charged with raping underage girls.

He narrowly escaped the death penalty by paying compensation to the girls' families and was convicted in 2006 of committing obscene acts with minors and sentenced to three years.

Glitter will be deported to Britain upon his release from Phuoc prison in August. But experts from the Metropolitan Police Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre fear he will try to go abroad again to prey on more kids.

The Met have sent reports on Glitter to several foreign embassies in London. The Filipino authorities are the first to take action to keep him out.

Marcelino Libanan, Immigration Commissioner in the Philippines, said: "I have placed him on a blacklist so he cannot enter our country. That is our first line of defence."

Glitter is a faded ‘has been’ 70’s pop star who has tried to rekindle his career on a number of occasions. He now has about as much chance of a come-back as Frank Sinatra. The world is a small place with few hiding places for the likes of Glitter and ‘hat’s off’ to The Philippines for banning him.

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