PARIS - First Interpol unmasked his face. Now it knows his name.
The international police organization, working off tips from people who responded to a global appeal for help, said yesterday it has identified a suspected pedophile shown in Internet photos abusing young boys.
The man, whose face initially was disguised behind a digitalized swirl, is now thought to be on the run in Thailand, Interpol said. He is said to be an English teacher at a school in South Korea.
The man was allegedly shown sexually abusing 12 young Vietnamese and Cambodian boys, apparently ranging in age from 6 to early teens, in about 200 photographs posted on the Internet. Using techniques that neither they nor Interpol would discuss, German police recreated an image of the man's face and released four reconstructed photos of him last week.
Interpol said more than 350 people then supplied tips to authorities worldwide. Officials are still collecting and analyzing evidence to bring charges against the man if he is arrested, it said.
Interpol went public after efforts to track down the man through its network ran dry. Ronald K. Noble, Interpol's secretary general, credited "remarkable progress" following the public response to its appeal for help on Oct. 8.
Interpol said it now knows the suspect's name, nationality, date of birth, and passport number, but it did not release that information. It said the man flew from Seoul to Bangkok Thursday, with security cameras documenting his arrival at Thai immigration.
"Thailand is at the center of an international manhunt, and authorities in the country, in cooperation with Interpol and police around the world, are hunting him down," Noble said.
In Bangkok late yesterday, the deputy chief of Thailand's Interpol liaison office, police Colonel Pornprasert Kanchanarin, said he was unaware of the new developments in the case. Interpol declined further comment yesterday beyond its statement.
Interpol provided two new photos of the suspect yesterday. One, taken by Thai immigration officials upon his arrival in Bangkok, showed him seemingly older, with close-cropped hair and wearing glasses. The other, which Interpol said was provided by an informant, was a simple head shot of the man, smiling and ruddy-faced.
Interpol's decision to release the reconstructed photos was seen as being somewhat risky because it could have tipped off criminals to police techniques and prompted them to better hide their identities.
The photos date from before December 2004, when they were found on the Internet, Anders Persson, a Swedish police officer assigned to Interpol's human trafficking unit, said last week.