Pirate Bay co-founder arrested
One of the founders of popular file-sharing website The Pirate Bay has been arrested under an Interpol warrant as he was crossing into Thailand from Laos.
Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij, who uses the alias TiAMO, was detained by Thai immigration police at a checkpoint in Thailand’s Nong Khai province, about 300 miles north east of Bangkok.
Neij, along with other Pirate Bay co-founders, was convicted of aiding copyright infringement by a court in Sweden in 2009. He fled the country after being released on bail.
Regional immigration police commissioner Major General Chartchai Eimsaeng said a US-based movie association had hired a Thai lawyer to search for Neij, and his photo had been given to immigration police in Nong Khai.
Maj Gen Chartchai said: “It might have been a coincidence but he was wearing the same grey T-shirt that was in the photo. The immigration police officer who spotted him in the car recognised him, so he pulled his car over.”
The immigration chief added that the 36-year-old Swede had lived in Laos since 2012 and travelled nearly 30 times to Thailand, where he has a house on the resort island of Phuket and five million baht (€122,213) in a savings account.
Neij’s wife was in the car with him. He is being taken to Bangkok and is expected to be returned to Sweden, police said.
The movie and music industries have for years pursued legal action against sites such as The Pirate Bay, which they say aid the illegal distribution of copyrighted material, depriving its makers of profits.
Neij is the second Pirate Bay founder to be arrested in south-east Asia after a Swedish court in 2009 gave him and three Pirate Bay associates one-year sentences for copyright violation. They also were ordered to pay 46 million kronor (€4.97m) in damages to the entertainment industry. Their appeals were denied by Sweden’s high court.
Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, who used the alias “Anakata” on the internet, was arrested in Cambodia in 2012 and sent back to Sweden after an international arrest warrant was issued against him.
Svartholm Warg served his sentence for copyright infringement while also facing a hacking charge in Denmark.
A Danish court on Friday sentenced him to three and a half years in prison after he was found guilty of hacking into a private company handling sensitive information for Danish authorities.
