Pirate Bay co-founder Warg to be deported from Cambodia

The Pirate Bay claims to have more than 30m users worldwide

One of the founders of the popular file-sharing The Pirate Bay website is to be deported from Cambodia.

Police chief Sok Phal said the decision to expel Gottfrid Svartholm Warg came after Swedish officials presented documents on the case against him.

Warg was held in Phnom Penh after an international warrant was issued against him by his native Sweden.

Sweden acted after he failed to show up for the start of his one-year jail term for copyright violations.

Cambodia and Sweden do not have an extradition treaty, so it is unclear to which country he will be deported.

"We will deport him based on our immigration law," police spokesman Kirth Chantharith said.

"We just know we will deport him. As to which country, that would be up to the Swedish side."

He added that no date had been set yet for the deportation.

Damages

Warg and the site's other founders - Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde, as well financier Carl Lundstroem - were convicted by a Swedish court of encouraging copyright violations in 2009 despite arguing that the website acted within the law.

Neij, Sunde and Lundstroem all had their one-year jail terms reduced to between four and 10 months following an appeal in 2010.

They were also ordered to pay nearly $7m (£4m) in damages for copyright infringement to music and movie companies.

However, Warg did not attend the appeal hearing, with his lawyer saying that he was too ill. The Swedish court then decided to uphold his sentence.

The operations of The Pirate Bay were largely shut down in Sweden six years ago, but the website has continued to function.

The site was founded in 2003, and claims to have more than 30m users worldwide.

No copyright content is hosted on the site's web servers. Instead, it hosts "torrent" links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.