Eight months suspended

Child porn on the computer: police officer on probation

On Wednesday, the accused was sentenced in the Salzburg provincial court.

(Bild: Markus Tschepp)

The Lungau police officer (57) had ten images and 16 videos with child pornography material on his laptop. The suspension was followed by a non-appealable conviction on Wednesday. The sentence: eight months probation.

The accused Austrian is 57. He has no wife, no children, but according to the indictment he had child porn on his laptop: at least ten pictures and 16 videos. Not only that: according to the indictment, he is said to have specifically searched for further material via the image search function of an internet service - the latter also led to the criminal authorities getting wind of it.

Defendant denies allegations
At the beginning of the criminal trial on December 16 in the regional court, the law enforcement officer from Lungau defended himself: "I didn't do anything," he said several times, insisting on his innocence. However, the 302-page expert report by an IT expert was heavily incriminating: during the continuation of the trial on Wednesday, the expert reported on his own "shredder" programs that had deleted tens of thousands of files from the defendant's laptop - even during the raid in December 2023.

It was not possible to clarify whether this included illegal content. Even those files that were proven to be child porn were deleted - but traces of these could be proven, including, for example, the playing and rewinding of a video showing a five-year-old. "He made an effort to cover the tracks," the expert mentioned.

Disciplinary measures after legal force
The defendant peppered the expert with a cascade of technical questions, put forward other possibilities such as malware and stuck to his opinion: "I didn't search for or upload any images." However, the court found that the evidence was sufficient for a conviction and handed down an eight-month suspended prison sentence. The officer now wants to fight the non-final judgment.

Meanwhile, the police confirmed in response to a question from the Krone: "The man has been suspended since the allegations came to light." Disciplinary measures could only follow once the verdict has become final.