IPSWICH: An Ipswich man is one of more than 670 people arrested around the world as part of a massive global child abuse investigation.

As part of Operation Rescue, one of the biggest inquiries ever mounted into paedophiles on the internet, Robert Horsman, from Ipswich was arrested in Thailand.

Property developer Robert Horsman, 46, orginally from Saxmundham, was sentenced to 14 years in prison last March after a court in Thailand found him guilty of sexually abusing two boys.

A judge in Bangkok ruled that Horsman, lured two 12-year-old boys to his home in Pattaya and molested them.

Horsman has been arrested three times for child sex offences since 2006, the latest of which was in 2008, with help of officers from Britain’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

He avoided jail on the first two arrests, but the former public schoolboy was given 12 years for molesting minors and two years for luring minors away from their parents.

He is currently serving his sentence in Klong Prem prison in the Thai capital.

His arrest came as part of the three-year operation, in which all of Britain’s 43 police forces took part.

Investigators identified and rescued 230 abused children, including 60 in the UK.

Details of the investigation were released today after the Dutch owner of a website at the centre of the inquiry was jailed.

Linchpin Amir Ish-Hurwitz, 37, ran online forum boylover.net which had 70,000 members.

Through it paedophiles splintered off, setting up private links to share sick images and films of child abuse.