BI seals 2006 with deportation of 4 pedophiles

The Bureau of Immigration (BI) is ending the year with the deportation of four foreign fugitives who were arrested in recent joint operations with various law enforcement agencies across the country.

Immigration Commissioner Alipio Fernandez Jr. said all four foreigners — an American, a German, a Briton and a Belgian — who are now detained at the bureau’s detention center in Bicutan, Taguig City, would be deported soon after the BI’s board of commissioners issues summary deportation orders against them.

Fernandez said the fugitives, who are wanted in their respective homelands either for rape, molestation or child abuse, would also be put on the bureau’s blacklist to prevent them from returning to the Philippines.

"We will send them home after all necessary clearances for their deportation are obtained," Fernandez stressed.

BI intelligence chief Faizal Hussin said the cases of the four aliens brought to 23 the total number of foreign pedophiles arrested this year in various joint operations of the bureau with other agencies, including National Bureau of Investigation and Philippine Center on Transnational Crimes.

Hussin said all other fugitives except for the four were already deported back to their respective countries and are now being tried or serving sentences for various crimes.

BI records showed the series of arrests of pedophiles began last Nov. 28 with the arrest in Olongapo City of American Melvin Edward McGowan, who was convicted by a court in California in 1995 on two counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a 14-year-old.

McGowan, 63, was first arrested and detained at the BI in March 2001 but disappeared and went into hiding after he was issued a medical pass.

Next to be arrested was German Rudolf Keikut, 55, who was arrested in Davao City last Nov. 30. He is wanted by a Munich court for supposedly sexually abusing his adopted daughter repeatedly for over seven years.

Last Dec.7, authorities arrested in Llanera, Nueva Ecija, the 57-year-old Kriss McCord, a Briton who was convicted in November 1999 on three counts of rape and four counts of indecent assault by a Nottingham Crown court.

Lastly, Belgian Luc Van Hecke, 61, was captured in Makati City last Dec. 8. He was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison in 1995 by a correctional court in Oudenaarde, Belgium, for sexual exploitation of children, child pornography and rape.

Fernadez has vowed to continue intensify operations next year against fugitives hiding in the country.