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Belfast man cleared of child porn charges

A BELFAST man who did not know his computer held images of child sex abuse and extreme pornography has been cleared of possessing more than 600 indecent images retrieved from the laptop. Andrew Haskins was acquitted of a total of 20 charges involving internet pornography on the direction of Judge Paul Ramsey QC after prosecutor Rosemary Walsh offered no evidence against him following discussions between defence and prosecution computer experts. The judge told the Belfast Crown Court jury of seven women and five men that in the circumstances they should find Mr Haskins not guilty. Following the acquittal defence lawyer Mark Farrell applied for his client to be freed as he faced no further charges in the crown court or any other court. When the trial opened on Monday the court heard that when police seized the computer in December 2012 it would have been "impossible" for anyone, save for an expert using specialist computer software, to have accessed any of the indecent photographs or videos. It was also accepted that Mr Haskins, of Ardlea Park in the east of the city, had not been "deliberately searching" for pictures or movies on the internet of children being sexually abused and that there was no evidence that the laptop had been deliberately used to trawl the web for child pornography or extreme pornography sites. During two interviews Mr Haskins denied ever having seen any of the images on his computer, although he accepted that he did search the internet for adult pornography. He also said that over the years he had lived in various flats with other men and that they and others had access to and may have used his laptop.