FORMER Burnley man Philip Howarth today triggered an international police hunt after jumping plane in Athens as police in Britain waited to interview him.

Sacked public schoolteacher Howarth, 39, was cleared of sexually abusing a young boy by a Thai court earlier this month but was due to return to the UK yesterday afternoon and face a new investigation into child pornography allegations following a police raid on his Wolverhampton home.

He was escorted to Bangkok airport but did not re-board his Olympic Airways flight from the Far East when it stopped to refuel in Athens.

It is understood Greek police were due to meet the flight but did not do so.

West Midlands had been waiting to interview the Wolverhampton magistrate when his plane touched down at Heathrow.

Now detectives are liaising with forces across Europe to track down the man whose mother Mrs Margaret Howarth still lives in the Padiham area.

Today the woman who stood by her son throughout the four months he awaited trial in Thailand after a 14-year-old half-naked local boy was found by police in his hotel room in the early hours of the morning, refused to comment on the latest developments.

"I have nothing to say," she told the Lancashire Evening Telegraph. Mrs Howarth had said she was "over the moon" after hearing of her son's acquittal after a judge ruled that although there was evidence Howarth was about to commit a crime there was no evidence he actually carried out the act.

The Burnley-born bachelor had phoned his mother to tell her of his acquittal as soon as the verdict was announced.

But within days of the acquittal, he was dismissed as maths teacher at the £4,100-a-term Royal Wolverhampton School, whose patron is the Queen Mother, with the school stating there had been an irreparable breakdown of trust and confidence in him.

Today a West Midlands police spokesman appealed for public help in tracking him down.

"West Midlands police have been liaising with other forces both in this country and abroad to try to locate him."

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