RICHMOND (NEWS1130) – A man from Maple Ridge who spent five years in a Thai prison for sexually abusing a child will is due back in court today.

Police want Christopher Neil, a former teacher, to be released on strict conditions, even though they don’t believe he has committed a crime in Canada.

Neil was arrested after he got off a flight at Vancouver International Airport Friday and he has been held in a Richmond jail ever since.

News1130′s legal analyst Michael Shapray says Neil will have something similar to a bail hearing.

“There is an application under 810.1 of the criminal code, [which says] when there is a reasonable fear that someone is going to commit offences, they can bring an application to put somebody on what is essentially a peace bond for up to twelve months,” explains Shapray.

“That can be for up to twelve months and a judge could impose conditions on the person that would be protective [for] whoever is sought to be protected, which in this case would be children,” he tells us.

Shapray says the court can order Neil to stay away from children under a certain age and places where they regularly hang out, like playgrounds.

The hearing will likely be covered by a publication ban, so the conditions of his release may not be made public.

Neil’s case gained notoriety in 2007 when police widely-released video images unscrambling an Internet photograph of Neil. He became the subject of an international manhunt when he was no longer disguised by a digital swirl in pictures of abuse posted online.

International media began referring to him as “Swirl Face.”