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Gary Glitter 'could return to Britain early' after surviving heart attack in Vietnamese prison
Last updated at 00:52am on 22.01.08Gary Glitter has suffered a heart attack in the Vietnamese prison where he is serving three years for child abuse.
Officials are deciding whether to send the disgraced pop star back to Britain on grounds of ill health.
Glitter, who was jailed in 2006 for abusing girls aged 11 and 12, was taken to casualty after he collapsed in his jail dormitory.
Yesterday, the 63-year- old was under police guard at the hospital in Phan Thiet, a coastal town in the country's south.
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Glitter walks the grounds of a hospital in Vietnam where he is recovering following a heart attack
Doctors say he is at risk of a second heart attack and is too ill to return to prison in the nearby resort of Thu Duc.
British embassy officials have visited Glitter in hospital and held talks with prison chiefs to discuss the next step.
A prison source said there were three options - make him serve out his sentence and risk having him die in custody, send him home to serve it in Britain, or release him unconditionally in Vietnam's annual lunar new year amnesty in February.
"The decision will be taken at the very highest level because what happens to Mr Glitter reflects on Vietnam", he said.
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Paedophile Glitter appears frail in the grounds of Benh Vien hospital
Officials in the capital, Hanoi, have ordered that he serve out his full term, less a three-month reduction in sentence granted last year, meaning he would go free in August.
Glitter - real name Paul Gadd - was put on tablets for high blood pressure last year and told to stop buying beer from the prison canteen.
He has been exempted from hard labour because of his age and shares a cell with 18 foreign inmates, most of them Asian.
Prison staff say Glitter has become increasingly isolated and depressed and is visited only by his lawyer. His health is said to have deteriorated sharply over Christmas and the New Year.
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Gary Glitter appears in court in Vietnam in 2006. He could be released early and allowed to return to Britain
The former singer faces immediate deportation when he is released.
If he returns to Britain he could face further charges under the Sex Offences Act 2003 which covers "sex tourism" abroad.
Glitter left the UK after serving a four-month jail sentence imposed in November 1999 for possessing 4,000 photographs of children being abused. He was also put on the sex offenders' register.
Reader views (12)
Let's hope he gets worse soon!
- Dave, London
Hopefully he will die there, as speaking for many parents here in the UK, we certainly do not want him back here!
- Brandon Thomas, London UK
No GS Randall we don't release them so that they prey on more children but neither do we encourage people who use language such as "let them rot in hell" in relation to them either.
I agree that paedophiles do not need apologists, they don't need anger directed at them either, what they need is help.
- Casper Slides, Bath, UK
Casper: sorry, but that's rubbish. Look how many victims of paedophiles don't go on to abuse others. I haven't abused anyone else - and I wasn't let down by society, either: I was let down by my nice, respectable middle-class neighbour who thought it was OK to abuse a 6 year old.
Get a grip!
- Roz, UK
Dear Fly and Matt as emotive as this issue is you obviously do not understand paedophilia. The majority of paedophiles were sexually abused as children. These people are not necessarily evil and in a majority of cases they are just as much victims as their own victims. If society hadn't let them down in the first place they probably wouldn't be commiting these crimes.
- Casper Slides, Bath, UK
So what do we do release them so they can prey on more children? Get real! Paedophiles do not need apologists.
- G S Randall, London
Hey keep him - let him die in Vietnam - at least it means that there will be one less paedophile to prey on our children.
- Minime, South East England
Have Channel 4 arranged an interview with him yet?
- Steven Patrick M, London, UK
Dear Fly and Matt as emotive as this issue is you obviously do not understand paedophilia. The majority of paedophiles were sexually abused as children. These people are not necessarily evil and in a majority of cases they are just as much victims as their own victims. If society hadn't let them down in the first place they probably wouldn't be commiting these crimes.
- Casper Slides, Bath, UK
Cue certain tabloid newspapers starting up their lynchmob mentality again.
- Petey Atrition, London
He's looks a lot like Santa Clause, I think it's a plan...for when he comes back to the UK.
- Daveb, London
Vietnam is one of the countries who refuse to take back their criminals from the UK when we try to deport them. Perhaps we can now do the same. I speak for most parents who also feel that this scumbag does not warrant the treatment.
- Fly, London
The dirty pervert should rot in prison!
- Matt, Auckland NZ
