Swiss paedophile gets two years hard labour
A Swiss national has been sentenced by a
Sri Lankan court to two years hard labour after he was caught
having sex with two young boys, police said.
Thomas Caspar Wirz, 44, of Zurich, was sentenced yesterday in
absentia by a magistrate in Kesbewa, a suburb of Colombo, said Mohamed Nizam, the deputy police chief in charge of the country's crackdown on child sex.
Wirz fled from Lanka last year after being released on bail, but has since been arrested in Switzerland on child sex charges. "We will be informing the Swiss police of the verdict through
Interpol, and discussing future actions in this case,'' Nizam said.
Police found Wirz and another Swiss man, Armin Heinrich
Pfaffhauser, 58, having sex with two boys aged 11 and 12, when they
raided a cheap hotel owned by Pfaffhauser in 1995.
Three weeks ago, the same judge handed down an identical
punishment to Pfaffhauser, who has lived in Sri Lanka for 25 years.
He has already begun his term in a Colombo prison.
The two boys were also convicted and sentenced to detention
homes operated by the government, but they ran away. They were
arrested again last September in the southern town of Matara with a
Belgian, Luc Coomens, who now faces similar child sex charges,
police said.
Last year, Sri Lanka toughened its laws to discourage foreign
paedophiles, raising prison terms to a maximum 20 years for pimps
and their clients. Cases against Wirz and Pfaffhauser were tried
under an old law.
Estimates of boy prostitutes in Sri Lanka range from 5,000 to
30,000.
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