Turkish man receives two-year sentence for child pornography possession on US intel
Using information gleaned from the U.S.- based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), Turkish authorities have sentenced a man to two years in prison for possessing child pornography on his phone.
Duvar English
Using information gleaned from the U.S.- based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), an Ankara court has sentenced a man two two years in prison on charges of “importing, duplicating, selling, transporting or exporting explicit content using children,” Demirören news agency reported on Sept. 8.
The man, referred to as M.B. in court documents, was found guilty for repeatedly visiting sites featuring child pornography and downloading those videos onto his mobile phone.
M.B. is 43 years old, married, and has a child. Authorities were first alerted to his online exploitation of children via an NCMEC report on the online sexual abuse of children. NCMEC alerted the Cyber Security department of the Turkish General Security Directorate, which launched an investigation.
Using his IP address, Turkish authorities discovered that M.B. frequently visited child pornography sites and had downloaded several explicit videos of children. The two-year prison sentence handed to M.B. is the minimum sentence outlined in Article 226/3 of the Turkish criminal code.
In his court defense, M.B. claimed that he had psychological problems and regretted his actions. He said he was ashamed and that he would delete the videos from his phone after he watched them. He continued this practice even after he went on religious pilgrimage (Umrah).
“At that time I had psychological problems,” he said, “I would watch the videos, then delete them. I am very ashamed, the thing I did was disgusting. I was ashamed before, then even after I went to Umrah (pilgrimage) I continued watching and deleting these types of videos.”
After he received a link to child pornography on his phone, M.B. said, he intermittently watched sexually explicit videos of children for two to three years, visiting sites, downloading videos, then deleting them. He said in his defense that he went to a psychiatrist to treat the problem and was now ashamed of his actions.