Crown case complete in paedophile porn trial

Published on Thursday 16 April 2009 22:02

THE prosecution completed its evidence yesterday in a major paedophile trial which heard that one of eight men in the dock had almost 80,000 indecent images of children on his computer.

In all, nearly 125,000 images had been found by Lothian and Borders Police during Operation Algebra.

The trial has been running for seven weeks at the High Court in Edinburgh and the Crown case was concluded by the reading of a statement of agreed facts.

It disclosed the number of images recovered from a computer linked to Neil Strachan, 41, had been 7,407. A further 47 images were found during a search of the flat he shared with Colin Slaven, 23, in Duff Street, Edinburgh. James Rennie, 38, of Marionville Road, Edinburgh had 6,545 images; Ross Webber, 27, of Gilbert Avenue, North Berwick, East Lothian, had 188; Craig Boath, 24, of Gourdie Street, Dundee, had 31,385; Neil Campbell, 46, of Glendareul Avenue, Bearsden, Glasgow, had 928; John Milligan, 40, of Wanlock Street, Govan, Glasgow, had 78,289; and John Murphy, 44, of Westmoreland Street, Govanhill, Glasgow, had 117.

The eight are accused of possessing child pornography and all except Slaven are charged with distributing images.

Strachan, Rennie, Webber, Boath, Campbell and Milligan deny conspiring to commit sexual offences against children. Rennie and Strachan are charged with indecency against boys.

Slaven had been accused of acting with Strachan in offences against boys, but the allegations were withdrawn yesterday.

The defence began legal submissions to the judge, Lord Bannatyne, and the jury was sent home until next week.