Gottfrid Svartholm, The Pirate Bay founder better known online as Anakata, has been arrested in a riverfront apartment in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital.

He has been wanted internationally ever since January, when he failed to appear in Sweden to serve a 12-month prison sentence.

So far, neither Cambodian nor Swedish authorities have issued public statements about the charges Svartholm now faces; we’ll update this post as more information becomes available.

Svartholm has been in significant legal trouble since 2006, when Swedish police first raided The Pirate Bay, a torrent site, for copyright violations.

In January 2008, Svartholm and Pirate Bay cohorts Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundström were charged with promoting others’ infringement of copyright, a conviction of which could lead to up to to years in jail and huge restitution fines.

In April 2009, the four were convicted as accessories to copyright crime and sentenced to one year in prison each. They were also ordered to pay around $3.5 million (30 million Swedish kronor) in damages.

While the other three Pirate Bay folks appealed and saw their prison time reduced (but their fines increased), Svartholm did not appeal. His window of time to appeal ran out in October 2011, and he was supposed to show up in Sweden January 2012 to start serving his year behind bars. Since failing to do so, he has been wanted internationally.

The 2006 raid, 2009 trial, and other events caused a storm of online activity, much of it retaliatory DDoS attacks and protests in support of The Pirate Bay team. While it remains the target of legal action, The Pirate Bay remains up and running and recently issued a statement reading, “We’re staying put where we are. We’re going nowhere. But we have a message to Hollywood, the investigators and the prosecutors: LOL.”

hat tip: Torrent Freak