Source: Government of Australia
Posted on: 25th October 2009
(Posted by CAAI News Media)
A 53-year-old Daintree man has been arrested by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) at Brisbane Airport, following his extradition from Cambodia.
This man is the first person to be extradited to Australia to face prosecution for offences under the laws which came into effect on 1 March 2005 relating to online child sex exploitation within the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth).
The arrest has resulted from an extensive investigation known as Operation Resistance, which commenced in June 2008 after information was received by the AFP’s High Tech Crime Operations Child Protection team from child protection counterparts in Brazil. The information indicated that alleged offenders were sharing videos depicting child sexual abuse on the Internet.
The man will face Brisbane Magistrates Court tomorrow, charged with offences including accessing child abuse material.
This extradition is also the first extradition from Cambodia to Australia since the introduction of the Cambodian Criminal Procedures Code in mid-2007.
On 20 November 2008, AFP officers executed a search warrant at a residential premises in Daintree, North Queensland.
The AFP seized ten hard drives and 60 compact discs at the premises. The total storage capacity of these items is approximately one terabyte.
The AFP estimates that one terabyte equates to 40,000 A4 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.
In December 2008, a first instance warrant was issued in Queensland for the arrest of the offender, who was believed to be travelling in South East Asia.
The man was arrested by Cambodian authorities in May 2009 pursuant to a provisional arrest request made by Australia. Following the presentation of a formal extradition request by Australia, and approval by the Cambodian Government, the man was extradited to Australia today.
Cambodia and Australia have both ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. The Optional Protocol allows signatory countries to make extradition requests for extradition offences in the absence of a bilateral extradition treaty. This is the first extradition request to be made by Australia under the Protocol.
The man has been charged by the AFP for possessing child exploitation material, contrary to the Criminal Code (Qld), accessing child pornography material from the internet, contrary to the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) and making available child pornography material to other users of the internet, contrary to the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth).
The arrest confirms the commitment of the AFP to protect children from abuse, including in the online environment.
The maximum penalty for these offences is 10 years imprisonment.
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