HANOI, June 15 (Xinhua) -- A court of appeal in Vietnam on Thursday afternoon upheld the three-year imprisonment sentence passed by the court of first instance on Gary Glitter, an ex-rocker from Britain, for the charge of molesting two local children.

The People's Court in southern Ho Chi Minh City said the verdict passed by the People's Court of southern Ba Ria Vung Tau province on March 3 on the 62-year-old former singer, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was fair, according sources present at the one-day trial.

The court said Gary Glitter molested the girls, born in 1994 and 1993, in early 2005.

He, detained by Vietnamese police last November when trying to board a flight for Thailand, had two local sex partners who brought the two girls, a niece of a partner and a friend of another partner, to a villa in the province's Vung Tau beach city rented by him.

During the two children's visits to the villa, Glitter molested them, the court of first instance said. However, the man insisted that he had done nothing sexual to the girls, just taught them English.

Glitter came to Vung Tau in December 2004, then left the city, and came back in March 2005. He was sentenced to four months' imprisonment in Britain in 1999 for possession of around 4,000 images of child pornography.

The age of consent in Vietnam is 16. According to the country's criminal law, sex with a minor is punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and raping a minor can be punished by death. Enditem