BANGKOK: Thailand deported former glam rocker and convicted paedophile Gary Glitter on Wednesday, sending him to Hong Kong after he refused to board a plane to his native Britain, a Thai immigration official said.

"He left Thailand for Hong Kong this evening," Colonel Voravat Amornvivat, a spokesman for the immigration service, told AFP.

Glitter arrived in Bangkok late Tuesday after being deporting from Vietnam, where he just finished serving nearly three years in prison for child sex offences.

The 64-year-old Briton had been booked to fly to London, but refused to get on the plane, Thai immigration officials said.

Glitter was then denied entry to Thailand because of his conviction, and Thai authorities had initially said he would be deported to London.

When he refused to board the plane to Britain, Thai authorities agreed for him to go to Hong Kong, the spokesman said.

Glitter – real name Paul Francis Gadd – spent two years and nine months in a Vietnamese prison after being convicted of committing obscene acts with the two girls in the southern resort town of Vung Tau in 2005.

Britain has not announced any outstanding charges against the singer once famed for his flamboyant bouffant wigs and silver jumpsuits, but British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said he should not be allowed to leave once he returns.

Glitter had several hits in the 1970s including "I'm The Leader Of The Gang (I Am!)" and "Do You Wanna Touch Me?" The anthemic 1972 hit "Rock and Roll" is still often chanted in British and US sports stadiums.

He was arrested in Britain in 1997 after he took his computer to a repair shop, where hardcore child pornographic material was found on its hard drive.

He was sentenced in 1999 to four months in prison, of which he served two.

Keen to avoid the media, Glitter reportedly moved to Cuba and then Cambodia, where he was expelled in 2002, allegedly for trawling for underage sex.

Having settled in communist Vietnam, where a British newspaper reported he was living with an underage girl, he was arrested at Ho Chi Minh City airport in November 2005 while trying to leave for Thailand.

In March 2006, he was sentenced to three years in prison, the minimum term under Vietnamese law, which was later cut by three months.

The singer maintained his innocence, blamed a media conspiracy and claimed he was teaching the girls English and allowed them to stay overnight because they were scared of ghosts.


- AFP/so