One of the World's Most Wanted Pedophiles Was Just Arrested After 14 Years on the Run
A lengthy and arduous international investigation has concluded with one of the world’s most wanted child sexual predators set to spend decades in a Malaysian prison.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported a man named Alladin Lanim, 40, had been sought since 2007 when he began posting online about how he sexually abused children.
The “dozens” of children he abused were said to be between the ages of 2 and 16. Thanks to the hard work of detectives at the Australian Federal Police and other law enforcement agencies, Lanim will no longer be victimizing children and sharing the abuse on the dark web.
“[Lanim] was so prolific with so many victims, that’s why he became a high priority,” said AFP Detective Sergeant Daniel Burnicle, who is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Burnicle and others were part of an international effort to find a man who had posted 1,000 photos of child sex abuse online through an anonymous profile.
All the AFP needed was a break, and the agency found one in August 2020.
Experts from the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation came across a photo on social media of a man they believed might be the one they had been searching for who might have been in Malaysia.
Unfortunately, a task force of people attempting to identify the man only had a photo and not a name. Malaysian authorities were sent the photo but had no luck.
Another break came when agents with AUSTRAC, Australia’s financial intelligence agency, came across the very same image as they look over financial records.
Through those records, and a matching image, the agency had a name: Lanim’s.
At some point this summer, police in Malaysia located Lanim at a COVID quarantine camp in the state of Sarawak. Apparently he’d done some traveling and was required to stay in that camp.
When he was ready to leave the facility on July 5, Malaysian police were waiting outside. Lanim was arrested.
“Local media said Lanim had molested children at a plantation and on the verandah of a house in Lundu and induced them to view pornographic material by letting them play a game on his phone,” the Herald reported. “Australian investigators, who provided a package of material to prosecutors in Kuching, identified 34 victims he had abused but believe there may have been more.”
Lanim was taken to the city of Kuching, where he pleaded guilty to 18 charges relating to child sex abuse and pornography. He will spend the next 48 years behind bars.
The Malaysian court also ordered Lanim to be caned 15 times.
Burnicle, with the AFP, celebrated the end of a long and complicated investigation in comments to the Herald.
“This [investigation] was all, of course, done during COVID, which made it all more difficult in terms of being able to get around the country and just conduct those basic field inquiries that you would do,” Burnicle told the outlet.
“We hope this case will be like a learning experience that we use over here and say ‘this is what’s happened, how can we do it better for next time?’ You need a police force to be able to counter this type of offending.”
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