Pirate Bay co-founder arrested in Thailand

Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij was detained at a checkpoint in Nong Khai following an international arrest warrant

BANGKOK: A co-founder of the Swedish file-sharing website, The Pirate Bay, has been arrested in Thailand, police said on Tuesday, after he tried to cross into the country from neighbouring Laos.

Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij, who is known in hacking communities as "TiAmo", was detained at a checkpoint in the northeastern town of Nong Khai, immigration police said.

"Neij was detained ... while trying to cross into Thailand from Laos where he had been living since 2012," Police Major General Chartchai Eimsaeng told reporters.

The Swede has traveled to Thailand nearly thirty times since 2012 and has a home on the resort island of Phuket, he added.

Neij was the subject of an international arrest warrant.

Neij and Gottfrid Warg founded The Pirate Bay in 2003. It has now grown into one of the world's largest file sharing websites, allowing users to share files through peer-to-peer technology.

Along with other co-founders, Neij was sentenced to prison and multi-million-dollar fines in 2009 for copyright infringement related to The Pirate Bay's activities.

Last week Warg, also known by his hacker alias "Anakata", was sentenced to 3-1/2 years in prison after being found guilty of hacking into the mainframe of IT provider CSC in Denmark and accessing the Danish Civil Registration System and a police criminal register in 2012.