BANGKOK, Nov 19 (AFP) - A German at the centre of an HIV scare involving potentially hundreds of Thai women and girls will be deported to his home country next week, Thai police said Friday.
Hans-Otto Schiemann, 54, who claims to be infected with HIV and that he had unprotected sex with hundreds of Thais, was remanded in custody last month on immigration charges.
Health officials, police and prosecutors say they are powerless to charge him over his sexual activities, which centred around the town of Chaiyaphum in the country's north.
"The court today found him guilty of the immigration charges and sentenced him to 58 days in jail, but as has already served the sentence we will proceed with his deportation, hopefully Monday," Police Lieutenant Colonel Kampol Nonuch told AFP.
Schiemann, whose common-law Thai wife of five years has AIDS, has refused to take a blood test since being picked up by the authorities in early October.
While in custody, he told AFP that he had contracted HIV three years ago and was "like heroin to girls".
Neighbours said he drove around the town offering large sums of money to students for sex and also frequented karaoke bars to pick up women.
Health officials printed some 2,000 flyers warning students to avoid him and posted banners throughout Chaiyaphum.
Those officials said the scale of the potential problem was not yet clear, with many women reluctant to come forward for an AIDS test, but said he could have had sex with up to 400 women and teenage girls.
Other officials said, based on interviews with his wife, that he had sex with at least 90 women. Schiemann told reporters last month it was 1,000.
The authorities said the former German sailor had overstayed his 30-day visa by three years.
German embassy officials could not be contacted Friday about the deportation of Schiemann.
Thailand was widely praised in the 1990s for its unflinching response to the AIDS epidemic, including promoting the use of condoms which helped reduce new annual infections from a high of 143,000 in 1991 to 19,000 last year.
But the government was criticised in a UN report earlier this year for reducing the budget for prevention efforts amid growing concerns over unsafe sex among young people.
More than one million people in Thailand have become infected with HIV since the first case was reported here 20 years ago.
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