A French pensioner suspected of sexual abuse of more than 300 minors has been arrested in Jakarta and faces heavy prison terms or even the death penalty, Indonesian authorities announced on Thursday. Indonesian police arrested the 65-year-old man in late June at a hotel in the Indonesian capital with two underage girls in his room. The French native of the Paris region had installed a studio in his hotel room.
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"He attracted the miners by offering to work as models," Jakarta chief Nana Sudjana told reporters Thursday. "Those who accepted sex were paid between 250,000 and one million rupees (between 10 and 60 euros). And those who refused were beaten by the suspect," he added.
A heavy prison sentence, up to the death penalty
The Frenchman faces a heavy prison sentence, and up to the death penalty, according to the police, if he is convicted on a series of charges falling under the Indonesian law on the protection of children. Police said they found videos or photos of more than 300 minors between the ages of 10 and 17 on his computer and suspects him of having filmed his sexual acts.
The retiree was in Indonesia on a tourist visa and has visited the Southeast Asian country several times in the past five years. According to the ECPAT International network which combats the sexual exploitation of minors, some 70,000 children are victims of these crimes each year in Indonesia. Last month, Russ Medlin, a fugitive American wanted for a massive cryptocurrency scam, was arrested in Jakarta on charges of sexually assaulting minors.