BANGKOK - With the help of a computer program, German police digitally unscrambled the swirls that obscured the face of a man depicted having sex with boys in Vietnam and Cambodia.
With the reach of the Internet, an unprecedented worldwide appeal by Interpol brought hundreds of responses via e-mail to the French-based police agency.
And with the aid of traced cellphone calls, Thai police tracked the suspect to a house well off the usual tourist trail, in northeastern Thailand.
The high-tech police work resulted in the arrest yesterday of Canadian schoolteacher Christopher Paul Neil, suspected of sexually abusing Asian boys, after a three-year global search.
Neil, 32, was detained at a house that he had rented with a friend in the rural province of Nakhon Ratchasima.
"I think he knew we were coming," said police Colonel Paisal Luesomboon, who was on the five-member police team that made the arrest.
"He knew that there was an arrest warrant issued and that his face was posted everywhere."
He said Neil acknowledged being the man they were seeking, but did not comment on whether he was the person depicted in about 200 Internet photos having sex with a dozen boys between the ages of 6 and 12.
Only 10 days earlier, Interpol had issued the appeal to identify the man whose face had been digitally obscured in the original photos.
After German police computer technicians were able to reverse the process, some photos of the man were publicly circulated, and hundreds of people responded with tips on his identity.
"Let all international criminals and fugitives be put on notice that Interpol, its police partners in 186 member countries, the public and the Internet present new and powerful possibilities for hunting them down wherever they might try to hide," Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said in a statement.
Neil was charged with detention of a child under 15 without parental consent, punishable by up to three years in prison; taking a child under 15 from his parents without consent, punishable by five to 20 years; and sexual abuse of a child under 15, punishable by up to 10 years.
Police are expected to bring him before a judge today and ask to keep him in custody pending further investigation.
The charges are based on the alleged abuse of a 9-year-old boy in Bangkok in 2003, but police say at least three other boys are believed to have had sex with him, and more charges may be filed.
Interpol called on his alleged victims to come forward.
"The investigation must now continue.
"All victims of this man must make themselves known," the head of Interpol's police services, Jean-Michel Louboutin, said at a news conference in Lyon, France.
He said five of nearly 400 e-mails received in response to its search put authorities on the suspect's trail.
It was the first time Interpol used the public in search of a suspect, Louboutin said.
On Thursday night, police traced a call made on a cellphone by a 25-year-old Thai man with whom Neil was previously known to be in touch with, said Paisal, superintendent of the Tourist Police Division.
Neil lived in Thailand from 2002 to early 2004, police said.
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