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Kavre/Kathmandu, June 11

Prosecutors said today that they would seek a 13-year jail term for a former United Nations official from Canada found guilty of sexually abusing two boys.

Peter John Dalglish, a 60-year-old former high-profile humanitarian worker, was found guilty by Kavre District Court yesterday and is due to be sentenced next month. A single bench of district judge Arjun Adhikari convicted Dalglish, who is from Ontario. He has denied the charges.

Dalglish was arrested on April 7 last year in Kavrepalanchowk district by Central Bureau of Investigation.

Two boys aged under 14 were at the house in Mandan Deupur Municipality of Kavre from where police arrested Dalglish, investigators said.

Lok Bahadur Katwal, government attorney in the case, said prosecutors presented statements of the victims, their medical reports and photos at the hearing.

“We have sought a maximum jail sentence of 13 years and necessary compensation for the victims in the case,” he said.

The next hearing has been set for July 8.

Court staffer Thakur Chandra Trital said Dalglish had been sent to Dhulikhel jail.

Dalglish, who in 2016 was awarded the Order of Canada — the country’s second-highest civilian honour — made his name as a humanitarian worker advocating for street children, child labourers and those affected by war.

He co-founded Street Kids International in the 1980s but it merged with Save the Children.

In the last decade, Dalglish has held key positions in UN agencies, including chief for UN Habitat in Afghanistan in 2015. In Nepal, Dalglish was an adviser in a child programme for the International Labour Organisation in the early 2000s.

Dalglish was appointed chief technical adviser for the UN’s child labour programme in Nepal in 2002. Between 2006 and 2010, he served as the executive director of the South Asia Children’s Fund, which promotes quality education for disadvantaged children in the region.

Dalglish served as a senior adviser and deputy chief of party for UN-Habitat in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2014, and its chief of party until the end of July 2015.

CIB investigation had revealed that Dalglish ran Himalayan Community Foundation in Kathmandu and had been sexually abusing children luring them by saying that he would provide them with better education and opportunity of foreign visit.

A version of this article appears in print on June 12, 2019 of The Himalayan Times.

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