Interpol says it has received more than 200 leads in the first 24 hours after launching a worldwide public appeal for help identifying a man seen sexually abusing young Southeast Asian boys in photos posted on the Internet.

The international police agency says nearly 30 times more visitors than on an average day went to its website in the first 12 hours after the launch.

In a statement yesterday, Interpol called the response "very positive" but declined to provide details about the leads.

The Lyon, France-based agency released six photos of the gray-haired, white man seemingly in his late 40s or early 50s in the appeal launched on Tuesday. The pictures are thought to have been taken in 2000 and 2001.

It was only the second time that Interpol has launched such a public manhunt for a suspected pedophile. The first time, last October, rapidly led to an arrest.

Interpol said it has other images, which it did not release, allegedly showing him sexually abusing at least three boys, apparently aged between 6 and 10 years old. The boys appear to be from Southeast Asia - though Interpol officials declined to specify any possible countries. Because of the lack of basic information about the man, Interpol officials said they were simply calling him "Mr Ident" - shortened from the word identity.

"We are doing this appeal now because all lines of police investigation have failed, and we believe that this man - because there are so many images out there, and he is linked to several children - is someone that can abuse again, can and will abuse again," said Kristin Kvigne, assistant director of Interpol's division that combats people trafficking, in an interview at the agency's headquarters in Lyon, France.

"The response to our appeal has been global and officers here at the Interpol General Secretariat and in our National Central Bureaus around the world are following up on all the information being provided," said Kvigne late Tuesday, more than 14 hours after the appeal was made public. She declined to comment further.

Police in Thailand and Cambodia said they had received information from Interpol.

The trail for the suspect first emerged in March 2006 when Norwegian police, working off a tip from Canadian counterparts, raided the Oslo home of a suspected pedophile and turned up 35,000 pictures of child pornography on the hard drive of his computer, including some of the man sought in the Interpol appeal, according to Interpol officials and Norwegian authorities.

John Stamnes, chief investigator for Norway's national crime police, said he believed there had been no personal contact between the Norwegian and the man wanted by Interpol. The Norwegian had taken only about 300 of the photos himself, and many others were downloaded, Stamnes said.

The Norwegian, a 48-year-old man with no previous criminal record, was convicted in June for sexually abusing six underage boys in Thailand and was sentenced to seven years in prison. His name was not released.

Anders Persson, a Swedish police officer assigned to Interpol's human trafficking unit, said it was impossible to know how many children in total the man could have abused.

"In the pictures received from Norway, there was actual abuse going on. We could see him involved in sex with children," he said. "In some of the pictures ... you don't see the full body, you just see a part of the body."

Four of the photos released publicly by Interpol show the man wearing glasses. Two show him lying down and wearing a plaid, yellow shirt. None of the six photos show him with boys - though one appears to show what looks like the side of a boy's shoulder, and a small tuft of hair.

Agencies

(China Daily 05/08/2008 page11)