ROSAMOND HUTT One of Britain's biggest internet paedophile investigations will be challenged in the Court of Appeal following claims hundreds of men may have been wrongly convicted.
A number of experts claim scores of those caught by Operation Ore, an extensive police inquiry involving thousands of British men, may not be paedophiles but victims of identity theft.
Their allegations will be tested when a judge rules whether the case of Anthony O'Shea, who was jailed for five months in 2005 for incitement to distribute indecent images of children, should go to full appeal.
Solicitor Chris Saltrese, who is representing Mr O'Shea and dozens of others convicted as a result of Operation Ore, said: "If the 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."
Operation Ore was launched in 2001 after US investigators passed on the names of 7100 Britons registered on Landslide Inc, an online company providing access to adult pornography and child abuse images. An estimated 39 of those arrested and prosecuted during Ore have reportedly killed themselves.
Details of every individual who was convicted or cautioned were placed on the Sex Offenders' Register.
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, which co-ordinated Ore, insists it was a successful operation, resulting in more than 2600 British men who downloaded images of child abuse, or attempted to, being brought to justice.
Mr O'Shea's case is one of hundreds involving men who were convicted of incitement to distribute indecent images of children.
Mr Saltrese said his client admitted accessing adult pornography but would produce evidence that his credit card had been fraudulently used to access a paedophile site within Landslide.
Mr O'Shea's home was raided in 2002 but no images were found, and at the time the card was used Mr Saltrese says his client was at a festival.
He said: "I have clients who have lost everything: their jobs, their homes, their marriages, their children and their health."
Mr Saltrese claimed the Landslide database was "absolutely riddled with fraud".
He added: "We are not just talking about isolated incidents."
His case is disputed by other experts who worked on Operation Ore.
Professor Peter Sommer, a computer crime expert, said: "There were very high levels of correlation between people having subscribed to that website and people being found in possession of child abuse images.
"In the incitement cases they did not just use the details on the database as a reason to prosecute. They went to the individual's bank to confirm that transactions had taken place, they checked whether the individual had ever complained that his card had been used fraudulently. They did not charge everyone they investigated."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article