Australian Extradited Over Child Pornography

Cambodia extradited a 53-year-old Australian man on Friday to face child pornography charges in Brisbane after police discovered more than 100,000 images and more than 10,000 video clips depicting the sexual abuse of children between the ages of one and 16 at the suspect's Australian home, according to a statement from the Australian Federal Police.

Robbie Neils Berry, who was arrested in May in Phnom Penh at the request of the AFP, ?is the first person to be extradited to Australia to face prosecution for offenses under the laws, which came into effect on 1 March 2005 relating to online child sex exploitation,? according to the statement

The statement added that Berry was to be sent to the Brisbane magistrate Court on Saturday.

?The AFP will allege in court that up to 140,000 images and 10350 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,? the statement said.

?It is a significant amount of material,? Phil Hunter, senior police liaison for the Australian Embassy in Cambodia, said yesterday.

According to Australian news sources, the Brisbane court charged Berry on Saturday with possessing child exploitation material, accessing child pornography material from the Internet and making child pornography available to other users on the Internet.

Mr Hunter said he did not know exactly where the images and videos were made but was confident they included no Cambodians. While Berry is known to have left Australia on Oct 22, 2008, neither the embassy nor local authorities can say exactly when he entered Cambodia or can account for his whereabouts up to his arrest in May. Mr Berry told the Phnom Penh Municipal Court that he?d been in Cambodia since late November, around the same time Australian police searched his home in Daintree, North Queensland.

Australia and Cambodia have no bilateral extradition treaty. However, both have ratified the Optional Protocol of the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, which allows signatories to request extraditions of one another in the absence of such agreements, according to the AFP statement.

Bith Kimhong, director of the Interior Ministry?s human trafficking department, said he was not aware of Mr Berry?s case.

Sourced = The Cambodia Daily