HANOI, March 3 (Xinhuanet) -- Gary Glitter, an ex-rocker from Britain, received a three-year imprisonment sentence Friday for the charge of molesting two Vietnamese children in 2005.

    The People's Court of southern Ba Ria Vung Tau province passed the verdict on the 62-year-old former singer, whose real name is Paul Gadd, saying he molested two local girls, born in 1994 and 1993, in early 2005, according to sources at the two-day trial closing on Friday morning.

Former British rock star Gary Glitter (C) is led out a local courthouse at the end of the first of Glitter's two-day trial on charge of child sex abuse. (AFP)

    Glitter, detained by Vietnamese police last November when trying to board a flight for Thailand, had two local sex partners who brought the two girls, a niece of a partner and a friend of another partner, to a villa in the province's Vung Tau beach city rented by him. During the two children's visits to the villa, Glitter molested them, the court said.

    Glitter came to Vung Tau in December 2004, then left the city, and came back in March 2005. He was sentenced to four months' imprisonment in Britain in 1999 for possession of around 4,000 images of child pornography.

    The age of consent in Vietnam is 16. According to the country's criminal law, sex with a minor is punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and raping a minor can be punished by death. Enditem