A Canadian man suspected of sexually assaulting young Asian boys will be held for at least 12 days in a Bangkok jail, a Thai court ordered Saturday.

After an international manhunt, Christopher Paul Neil of Maple Ridge, B.C., was arrested early Friday in Thailand.

Christopher Paul Neil is shown at a police news conference in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday.
(Apichart Weerawong/Associated Press)

The 32-year-old appeared briefly at the Bangkok Criminal Court later Friday for a hearing, where a judge signed a police order to extend his detention to 12 days and could keep him behind bars up to 84 days.

He was later sent to Bangkok Remand Prison pending his trial on molestation charges. Neil has denied the charges, police said.

Neil became the subject of the hunt two weeks ago after Interpol issued his photo in a rare appeal in a three-year-long investigation.

The global police organization was trying to track down a man who appeared in 200 photos posted on the internet depicting the sexual abuse of young Asian boys.

The man's face was obscured with a digital swirl in the online photos, but police in Germany managed to reconstruct the photos.

Thai police later indentified the man as Neil, a Canadian who had been teaching English in South Korea.

Neil's family have said they would like to see him brought back to Canada.

With files from the Associated Press