Man who had sick animal porn avoids jail sentence

Pervert’s stash also included illegal images of children

A Syrian refugee who was caught with a stash of vile porn involving humans carrying out sex acts with orangutans and alligators has escaped going to jail.

A police investigation was launched after Chad Khalil Amiri’s IP address was used to download indecent images and led to his house in Calder Street, Coatbridge, being raided.

The probe also revealed that the 24-year-old had been using WhatsApp to share depraved images and films of child abuse with fellow perverts.

Amiri, now of Gayne Drive in Glenboig, appeared at Airdrie Sheriff Court last week for sentencing after previously admitting three charges of taking or permitting indecent images of children to be taken, distributing images and possessing extreme pornography between January 30 and December 5, 2018.

Sheriff Derek O’Carroll, who previously told Amiri that jail was the likely outcome, put him on a community payback order.

Amiri, through an Arabic interpreter, was told by the sheriff to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work as an alternative to custody.

An allegation that he performed a circumcision on a baby without any anaesthetic and had closed the wound with a soldering device between August 2017 and December 2018, while acting with others, was dropped by the Crown.

Prosecutor Liz Ross said: “In November 2018, information was received by the national Online Child Abuse Prevention Agency that there had been sharing of indecent images online.

“The information was that, in August 2018, a device was connected to the internet and contained indecent images of children which were available for sharing and had been accessed from the home address of the accused.

“In December, police attended at the home of the accused and were allowed entry where a search was carried out, during which a Samsung phone was seized.

“He admitted it was his phone and provided police with a password for it.

“Indecent images were later recovered from this mobile phone and it contained both still and moving images involving male children aged between one and 14.

“They were being sent through WhatsApp and he distributed one category A image to seven

WhatsApp users on nine separate occasions.

“There were also unique images of extreme pornography featuring an orangutan and an alligator.

“He was arrested and charged.”

Amiri spoke at an event with other refugees in 2017 and described the horrors of the war-torn country where he was kidnapped near Damascus by government forces and tortured in a detention centre.

He said he was only released after his family paid a ransom and they fled.

Amiri resettled in Scotland as part of the UK government’s plan to rehouse 20,000 refugees fleeing a brutal civil war in Syria.

Sheriff O’Carroll also put Amiri on the sex offenders’ register.

Sentenced Chad Khalil Amiri