Thai court jails "swirly-face" Canadian pedophile

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Thai court sentenced Canadian "swirly face" pedophile Christopher Neil to 39 months in prison on Friday for abducting and molesting a 14-year-old boy and posting pornographic pictures on the Internet.

Neil, who appeared in court wearing orange prison garb and shackled at the ankles, refused to comment after the verdict. His translator, Feros Mia, told reporters he had shown no emotion in court and that he was "fine with the verdict".

The judge handed down a sentence of 6-½ years but said she was cutting that in half because Neil had confessed.

He faces another trial in October on a charge of molesting the boy's younger brother, who was nine at the time of the alleged offence.

Neil, who is in his early 30s, was caught after police computer experts in Germany unraveled his digitally scrambled face from images of child sex abuse on the Internet, prompting Interpol to issue a worldwide public appeal to identify him.

The pictures are thought to have been taken in Vietnam or Cambodia, outside Thai jurisdiction.

After he was unmasked, Neil fled to Thailand from South Korea, where he had been teaching, but was caught after a week on the run. Two Thai brothers came forward and accused him of paying them for oral sex, leading to his prosecution in Bangkok.

Neil was also ordered to pay compensation to the boy's family of 60,000 baht ($1,780).

($1=33.70 Baht)

(Reporting by Songphon Koisiriphong; Writing by Alan Raybould; Editing by Ed Cropley and Sanjeev Miglani)