Pedophile arrested at NAIA1 with would-be victim
Published May 28, 2019 11:03 am
By Jun Ramirez
Immigration and police authorities have arrested a suspected American pedophile while meeting his would-be victim, a female minor, at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).
(MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO)
Bureau of Immigration (BI) port operations chief Grifton Medina said 43-year-old Piotr Kmita was apprehended Monday in an entrapment operation minutes after he arrived at the NAIA Terminal 1 via a China Eastern Airlines flight from Pudong, China.
He was subsequently turned over to the custody of the Philippine National Police’s women and children protection center (WCPC) in Pampanga where the rescued girl hails from.
Medina said Kmita will be charged for violating Republic Act 10364, the expanded anti-trafficking in persons act which penalizes the act of “procuring a child for prostitution and obtaining a person for the purpose of prostitution, pornography, or sexual exploitation.”
Bienvenido Castillo, who heads the BI-NAIA’s border control and intelligence unit (BCIU), said that agents from the US government’s Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) sought the assistance of the BI in monitoring the American, after he was discovered to have engaged in sexually explicit conversations with the young victim that he befriended online through Facebook.
“The HSI then relayed the information to the PNP regional office in Pampanga, and we jointly conducted the operations to intercept Kmita upon his arrival in Manila,” Castillo added.
Castillo reported that the arresting agents tailed Kmita from the moment he arrived, up to the area outside the airport where he met his victim and where he was arrested.
BI Commissioner Jaime Morente commended the efforts of the officers in ensuring the successful apprehension of the foreign pedophile.
“Different agencies should work together to successfully weed out undesirables like him,” said Morente. “
The BI Chief said Kmita’s deportation will have to wait until the criminal charges against him are resolved, adding that, if convicted, he will have to serve his sentence first before he could be sent back to the US.
(MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO)
Bureau of Immigration (BI) port operations chief Grifton Medina said 43-year-old Piotr Kmita was apprehended Monday in an entrapment operation minutes after he arrived at the NAIA Terminal 1 via a China Eastern Airlines flight from Pudong, China.
He was subsequently turned over to the custody of the Philippine National Police’s women and children protection center (WCPC) in Pampanga where the rescued girl hails from.
Medina said Kmita will be charged for violating Republic Act 10364, the expanded anti-trafficking in persons act which penalizes the act of “procuring a child for prostitution and obtaining a person for the purpose of prostitution, pornography, or sexual exploitation.”
Bienvenido Castillo, who heads the BI-NAIA’s border control and intelligence unit (BCIU), said that agents from the US government’s Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) sought the assistance of the BI in monitoring the American, after he was discovered to have engaged in sexually explicit conversations with the young victim that he befriended online through Facebook.
“The HSI then relayed the information to the PNP regional office in Pampanga, and we jointly conducted the operations to intercept Kmita upon his arrival in Manila,” Castillo added.
Castillo reported that the arresting agents tailed Kmita from the moment he arrived, up to the area outside the airport where he met his victim and where he was arrested.
BI Commissioner Jaime Morente commended the efforts of the officers in ensuring the successful apprehension of the foreign pedophile.
“Different agencies should work together to successfully weed out undesirables like him,” said Morente. “
The BI Chief said Kmita’s deportation will have to wait until the criminal charges against him are resolved, adding that, if convicted, he will have to serve his sentence first before he could be sent back to the US.