Operation Ore convictions to be challenged in appeal court

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 3 Jul 2009 at 08:00

Britain's biggest online paedophile inquiry is set to be challenged in the appeal court, potentially paving the way for hundreds of convictions to be quashed.

PC Pro first reported in 2005 how evidence used against more than 7,000 people accused of being paedophiles as part of Operation Ore was flawed.

Duncan Campbell's investigation revealed that men who were accused of purchasing child pornography over the internet may have been innocent victims of credit-card fraud.

As many as 39 people have taken their own life under the pressure of Operation Ore investigations.

Now, the evidence faces renewed scrutiny, when one of the men convicted during Operation Ore takes his case to the court of appeal.

Chris Saltrese, the solicitor representing the convicted man, Anthony O'Shea, told The Guardian: "If his appeal is successful the convictions of others for the same offence will fall too. We are talking in the hundreds and we say this is a huge miscarriage of justice."

The Guardian reports that O'Shea was convicted of two counts of incitement to distribute indecent photographs of children and three of attempted incitement to distribute indecent images in 2005. He was sentenced to five months in jail.

No child abuse images were discovered when police raided O'Shea's house in 2002, and his lawyers claim to have evidence that his credit card details were stolen to access child pornography. Saltrese claims O'Shea was at a festival at the time his credit-card details were used on the Landslide site.

The police Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) has always robustly defended its evidence. A spokesman for CEOP told The Guardian: "To the best of our knowledge all incitement cases included additional evidence to support the prosecution beyond simple, single credit card details.

"At the time of Operation Ore, individuals were suspected of subscribing to a website offering child abuse images. Those who had would have provided personal data to a registration page... name, postal address, email address, a personal password and their credit card details... The IP address of the subscriber may have been captured by the system.

"We would have expected that once a defendant had raised the possibility of being a victim of credit card fraud, inquiries would be undertaken in order to ascertain if that was correct."