Cache of abuse images largest found
His collection of child abuse and torture images and movies was so large he made his own disturbing advertising video to show online and offered to trade.
Salman Jabbar Alhisaynawi’s collection of sexual abuse, torture, cruelty and bestiality featuring child victims was the largest the Internal Affairs department had prosecuted.
He was caught after tips to the department’s tipline during 2015 that a New Zealander was trading images and movies overseas.
It was tracked to his Lower Hutt home and a search found 220,000 images and more than 3000 movies on computers and devices and many stored in cloud accounts around the world.
Wellington District Court judge Ian Mill yesterday jailed him for five years. He had pleaded guilty to one charge of making an objectionable publication, three of possessing and three of distribution since 2012.
The judge said Alhisaynawi also had an electronic handbook titled Welcome to the Pedophile outlining detailed methods and techniques on approaching children and practising sexual relationships and having sex with them.
An advertisement featured movies of children being abused and a voiceover by him inviting others to trade with him.
Another 27,000 pictures and more than 1000 movies were not the subject of charges as the ages of the victims could not be assessed.
The judge said people gratifying their sexual deviancies obscured the facts that the production of it relied on the exploitation and defilement of children, probably on the other side of the world, who were vulnerable, for commercial gain and while the possessors of the material may be remote in time and places, their deviancy fuelled the demand.
He said one of the victims was known. ‘‘She says she is 19 now and has to live with the horrible knowledge that someone, somewhere is watching the most terrifying moments in her life and taking grotesque pleasure.’’
She had said it was made worse knowing the images could never be removed from the internet.
The judge said the collection was sizeable and spanned several years.
‘‘I have viewed some of it and it showed at times distressed, coerced and fearful children. I note the defendant himself suffers from the effect of traumatic events and it puzzles me that I see no recognition from him of the trauma in the lives of these young people which he should have felt as he traded their images and saw their faces.’’
Defence lawyer Geoff Fulton said Alhisaynawi described it as having an internal demon that made him do things he did not want to do, fuelling his addiction to electronic devices. He said it was a form of social contact for someone who was socially isolated and the electronic links became his life.
The judge refused him name suppression and ordered all devices to be forfeited and all images to be destroyed.