Asiaone News
Tue, Feb 03, 2009
AFP
PHNOM PENH,CAMBODIA - A CAMBODIAN court on Tuesday upheld a paedophile conviction against a German national but cut three years from his prison sentence, citing a change in child abuse laws.
Cambodia's Appeal Court ruled that Alexander Moritz Watrin, 38, was guilty of sexually abusing children, but reduced his sentence from 10 years to seven years in jail.
Watrin was originally found guilty in October 2006 of debauchery, the term Cambodian authorities used for sexual abuse before laws were changed last year.
He was arrested in 2006 in the beach town of Sihanoukville, 140 miles (225 kilometres) southwest of the capital Phnom Penh, for allegedly abusing four homeless boys as young as seven years old.
The German, who was also ordered to pay a total of US$5,000 (S$7,563) to the families of the boys, maintains he is innocent.
'I did not commit the crimes,' Watrin told the Appeal Court during his hearing last Thursday, while the four boys testified he had repeatedly molested them.
Dozens of foreigners have been jailed for child sex crimes or deported to face trial in their home countries since Cambodia launched an anti-paedophilia push in 2003 in a bid to shake off its reputation as a haven for sex predators. -AFP
Tue, Feb 03, 2009
AFP
PHNOM PENH,CAMBODIA - A CAMBODIAN court on Tuesday upheld a paedophile conviction against a German national but cut three years from his prison sentence, citing a change in child abuse laws.
Cambodia's Appeal Court ruled that Alexander Moritz Watrin, 38, was guilty of sexually abusing children, but reduced his sentence from 10 years to seven years in jail.
Watrin was originally found guilty in October 2006 of debauchery, the term Cambodian authorities used for sexual abuse before laws were changed last year.
He was arrested in 2006 in the beach town of Sihanoukville, 140 miles (225 kilometres) southwest of the capital Phnom Penh, for allegedly abusing four homeless boys as young as seven years old.
The German, who was also ordered to pay a total of US$5,000 (S$7,563) to the families of the boys, maintains he is innocent.
'I did not commit the crimes,' Watrin told the Appeal Court during his hearing last Thursday, while the four boys testified he had repeatedly molested them.
Dozens of foreigners have been jailed for child sex crimes or deported to face trial in their home countries since Cambodia launched an anti-paedophilia push in 2003 in a bid to shake off its reputation as a haven for sex predators. -AFP
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