Gary Glitter was called back to prison just weeks after the pedophile pop star was released

Gary Glitter was sent to prison again after violating his license terms, the parole service said, Just weeks after the pedophile pop star was released from prison.

The disgraced 78-year-old was released from Dorset’s HMP The Verne in February after serving half of his 16-year sentence for sexually abusing three young girls.

But footage emerged this weekend, filmed by another prisoner in his bail house, showing Glitter – real name Paul Gadd – using a smartphone and talking about accessing the dark web, which is preventing users from accessing illegal and violent content allows.

Any re-release is now a matter for the parole board. A spokesman for the probation service said: “Protecting the public is our top priority. That’s why we have strict licensing terms in place, and if offenders break them, we don’t hesitate to take them back into custody.”

Originally known for a string of hits in the 1970s, Glitter, at the height of his fame, carried out assaults on girls as young as 12 and 13, separating them from their mothers by kicking them backstage at one of his shows into his wardrobe brought.

His third victim was less than 10 years old when he snuck into her bed in 1975 and attempted to rape her.

The allegations didn’t come to light until four decades later, when Glitter became the first person arrested as part of Operation Yewtree, the investigation launched in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

He was previously jailed for four months after admitting possession of 4,000 child pornographic images and was expelled from Cambodia three months later after reports of allegations of sex crimes.

He was subsequently sentenced in March 2006 to two and a half years in prison for sexually abusing two girls aged 10 and 11 in Vietnam before being unlawfully convicted in the UK in 2015 of attempted rape, sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 13 and four counts of indecent assault.

After his automatic release from HMP The Verne – a low-security Category C prison – in February halfway through his probation, Glitter was subject to licensing conditions, including close monitoring by the police and the Probation Service, and was fitted with a GPS shield.

However, expectations were quickly raised that he would be taken back into custody afterwards The sun on Sunday released footage that appears to show Glitter discussing search engines that protect user privacy.

“Should I get rid of that duck duck?” he asks, to which another voice replies, “Yeah, I wouldn’t bother using that if I were you.”

Glitter then asks, “Then what do I do next? Let’s try to find this onion. One step at a time.”

It is believed he was referring to the DuckDuckGo search engine and the encrypted Tor networks, many of which have .onion URLs used to access the dark web.

“This is extremely worrying and shows that he is trying to access material that he should not be accessing,” former Detective Superintendent Michael Hames, who set up the Metropolitan Police’s pedophile unit, told the newspaper.

Additional reporting by PA