A MAN faces being deported after he was convicted of spying on a ten-year-old girl in a swimming pool changing room.

Al-Sayed Sultan, of Greenstead Road, Colchester, was found guilty of attempted voyeurism at Colchester Leisure World last year.

He was convicted at Chelmsford Crown Court yesterday and immediately placed on the sex offenders’ register.

The 30-year-old, who was in the UK on a student visa which expired in January, now faces being deported back to Saudi Arabia when he is sentenced next month.

The court heard Sultan was spotted pushing a mirror under a child’s cubicle door at the leisure centre’s unisex changing rooms on September 6, 2008.

The youngster saw his reflection and told her mother and Sultan was arrested shortly afterwards in a toilet cubicle.

A mirror was found in his possession.

During the trial, Sultan told the court he went into the leisure centre that day to look for a lost mobile phone when he suffered a pain in his mouth.

He said he shut himself in a cubicle to gargle with mouthwash, but as he sat down on the cubicle bench, he was overcome with a pain in his left leg which had started to spasm.

He said he had been massaging his leg while crouching on the floor and using a mirror to look in his mouth.

He denied using the mirror for sexual gratification.

The jury was told investigations confirmed Sultan had had a cyst removed from his leg and an abscess removed from his mouth in the months before the incident.

The jury also watched a taped police interview with the youngster who described a tanned man with a black moustache and round glasses who was wearing flip-flops and jeans. She also saw Sultan looking in another cubicle.

He was bailed to reappear at court for sentencing at the end of July.