A suspected prolific paedophile on the run from an international manhunt centred in Thailand was named today as a Canadian teacher called Christopher Paul Neil.

Thai police today named the 32-year-old suspect who was identified after an unprecedented global appeal launched last week. German police unscrambled digitally altered images of a man, codenamed Vico, abusing children in Vietnam and Cambodia and asked the public to help find him.

Three days after Interpol published the pictures Mr Neil, an English teacher, fled his home in South Korea and flew to Bangkok.

Thailand’s Southeast Asian neighbours have been placed on alert to watch for the suspect in case he tries to slip out of the country, but Thai police believe he has not yet crossed the border.

Yesterday Interpol said that the suspect, photographed abusing children in Vietnam and Cambodia, had been identified by five sources.

The international police organisation released a picture of the man, who flew into Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok from Seoul on Thursday. The image captured at Thai customs shows a man in his thirties with receding hair and wearing glasses.

Ronald Noble, Interpol’s Secretary-General, said in a statement: “Thailand is at the centre of an international manhunt, and authorities in the country, in cooperation with Interpol and police around the world, are hunting him down.” He praised the remarkable response to the appeal and added: “We must once again enlist the public’s support, this time to pinpoint Vico’s current location.”

Police specialists are reviewing the information and although Interpol would not comment on details of the investigation, it said that all leads would be directed to Interpol’s National Central Bureau or police experts specialising in crimes against children.

Interpol made the appeal after its initial investigation across 186 countries failed to identify the man. Photographs of him abusing young boys were altered to create a swirling effect that disguised his face. But specialists from the German federal police agency, the Bundeskriminalamt, worked with the Trafficking in Human Beings Unit of Interpol to unscramble the pictures. After Interpol released a series of identifiable images of the man it received 350 messages from the public. National police forces from Interpol’s member countries also were given leads.

Kristin Kvigne, assistant director of Interpol’s trafficking in human beings unit, which is managing the case, said: “The public’s response has been very positive, and we have also had encouraging feedback from local and national law enforcement officers.”

The case is part of Interpol’s aim to collect every image of child abuse that exists on the internet. The organisation hopes to examine each image, enabling an expert to analyse pictures of abuse as soon as they arrive in police hands. The database has helped to identify more than 600 victims from 31 countries.

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