Glitter To Be Held For Three Months

Disgraced rock star Gary Glitter will spend three months in a Vietnamese jail while the police investigate suspicions that he’s been committing obscene acts with children.

“Police have enough evidence to keep him for three months,” state prosecutor Nguyen Van Xung told local newspapers.

Reports suggest the authorities have obtained statements from five girls about their sexual involvement with Glitter. The 61-year-old former glam rocker is said to have denied all allegations and has yet to be charged with any crime.

His lawyer, Thanh Kinh, is still working on getting his client released on bail.

Glitter was arrested at Ho Chi Minh airport November 19 as he tried to flee Vietnam by flying to Bangkok, according to the state-controlled local media.

He was taken to Ba-Ria Vung Tau province, where detectives were expected to question him over newspaper reports saying he’s been taking two local girls back to his rented house in the resort town of Vung Tau.

The story of his alleged involvement with the girls broke in the November 13 edition of the U.K.’s News Of The World, which ran a couple of pictures that appeared to show Glitter (real name Paul Gadd) ferrying them around the town on his motor scooter.

Gadd faces the accusation that he engaged in “obscene acts with a child,” according to the national Tuoi Tre newspaper.

Under Vietnamese law, Gadd faces up to 12 years in prison if he is convicted of having sex with someone under the age of consent. Other child abuse charges carry the death penalty.

Gadd is thought to have arrived in Vietnam after being kicked out of Cambodia last March. Angry campaigners hounded him out after he was detained for three nights over allegations of sexual impropriety with children.

He was never convicted of any offences and has petitioned to have the Cambodian expulsion orders lifted. The case is still pending.

He was convicted of paedophile offences in Britain in 1999 and served two months in jail after admitting to 54 charges related to possessing 4,000 child pornography images on his computer. He was also put on the sexual offenders list.

— John Gammon