Irishman faces US extradition for facilitating child porn

AN Irishman described by the FBI as the world’s ‘largest facilitator of child pornography’ yesterday lost his Supreme Court bid to stop his extradition.

Eric Eoin Marques has been fighting his extradition since his arrest in August 2013, and has been in custody for the entire time.

He is alleged to have been the owner and administrator of a ‘dark web’ service known as Freedom Hosting, and is wanted by the US authorities on charges relating to advertising and distributing child sexual abuse images.

Ronan Kennedy BL, for the State, confirmed that the decision of the highest court in Ireland would lift any stay on the surrender of Marques to the United States.

The unanimous decision of the fivejudge court was announced by Judge Peter Charleton.

Marques, who is in his early 30s, had argued that the then justice minister Frances Fitzgerald should have intervened to block his extradition.

Freedom Hosting was a specialist service that allowed people to host websites anonymously.

The charges relating to images on over 100 anonymous websites, which were described as being extremely violent, graphic and depicting the rape and torture of pre-pubescent children.

The websites have ‘thousands of members’, who have posted ‘millions of images’. Some of the children involved are infants, the FBI has claimed.

If convicted, he faces sentences of up to 30 years in prison.

Marques has already lost an attempt to have his extradition halted on the grounds that it breached his rights.

He has an address at Mountjoy Square in central Dublin, and has both Irish and US citizenship.

His counsel, Sunniva McDonagh SC, argued that the minister should have taken humanitarian grounds into account.