Baby porn case postponed again

PLETTENBERG BAY NEWS - Two years after the arrest of a Plettenberg Bay man accused of having links to an international baby pornography ring, the matter is still not under way.

The 38-year-old computer engineer, who cannot be named until he has pleaded, was scheduled to take his place in the dock in the Knysna Regional Court on Friday, January 27, but failed to show up.

His lawyer Carl Jeppe informed the court that his client was ill and therefore the matter had to be postponed to February 7.

There has been a litany of delays in the case since the man was arrested on January 13, 2015 when international police swooped on his seaside home and allegedly found sections of files containing thousands of images and videos of violent assaults as well as internet addresses of more than 300 alleged paedophiles.

Some other delays included issues with the formulation of the charge sheet including a decision by the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) who instructed that the man be individually charged for each of the 179 000 images relating to the case, and that each image would have to be described in the charge sheet. It was estimated that his process could take up to three months.

These images have since been listed and described.

The Plettenberg Bay local was the first South African to have been arrested as part of Cloud 9, an operation by South African and Belgian police responsible for cracking down on a child pornography ring linked to a cyber meeting space for paedophiles whose fetishes seem to be the sexual abuse of babies.

Some of the images found included the torture and murder of babies as young as only a few days old.

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