Queensland man accused of keeping catalogue of horror

CHRISTINE KELLETT


A north Queensland man allegedly caught with a terabyte worth of videos depicting the sexual abuse of young children and babies has been extradited from Cambodia.

The 53-year-old Daintree man was arrested at Brisbane Airport yesterday and is expected to appear in Brisbane Magistrates Court today on charges of possessing child exploitation material, accessing child pornography material from the internet, and making available child pornography material to other users of the internet.

He is the first person to be extradited to face prosecution for alleged child sex crimes under 2005 changes to the Commonwealth Criminal Code and a new international treaty to stop the sale of children for sex and pornography.

His arrest follows a year-long investigation by the Australian Federal Police's High Tech Crime Operations team, dubbed Operation Resistance, and their counterparts in Brazil

Police allege a number of offenders had been operating a library of child abuse videos for sharing over the internet.

In the Daintree man's home, raided in November last year, police say they found 10 computer hard drives and 60 compact discs containing child abuse video files depicting attacks on children as young as 12 months old.

The sheer volume of files - totalling a terabyte of information - is equivalent to 40,000 filing cabinets of paper.

"The AFP will allege in court that up to 140,000 images and 10,350 graphic videos were located at the premises, containing abuse images of children and infants as young as 12 months to persons under the age of 16," investigators said in a statement today.

One month after the raid, an arrest warrant was issued for the man, who was believed to have travelled to South East Asia.

Cambodia's government approved his formal extradition to face a Queensland court.

He has been charged with possessing, accessing and making available child pornography, offences which carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years' jail.