PARIS – He apparently traveled the world sexually abusing young boys but remained unidentifiable – until now.
Police in Europe have unscrambled digitally altered images found on the Internet to reveal the face of a man shown abusing boys in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Interpol released four reconstructed photos of the suspected pedophile Monday in an unprecedented public appeal for help, hoping that someone will recognize the man whose identity and nationality remain a mystery.
The response has been encouraging: about 200 messages in just over 12 hours, Interpol said. Some of the responses included detailed information such as names and addresses. Others are sightings of people met on vacation.
Interpol said 12 boys, apparently ranging in age from 6 to early teens, appeared in about 200 online photos. But the face of the man inflicting the abuse was disguised in a digital whirl.
Using techniques that neither they nor Interpol would discuss, German police produced identifiable images of the man from the original pictures. The reconstructed photos show a white man who looks to be in his 30s, with short brown hair. One shows him wearing glasses. In another he smiles, and another shows that he has a hairy chest. Interpol posted the images on its website, www.interpol.int.
Anders Persson, a Swedish police officer seconded to Interpol’s human trafficking unit who oversees its database of images of child abuse, said he had opposed making the photos public because it demonstrated to criminals that police can unscramble pictures. But that consideration and the risk that the man could face public humiliation or violence now that he is recognizable were outweighed by the desire to protect other children from abuse.
