A couple have both admitted possessing indecent images of children after vile photos and videos were found on their mobile phones.
Saosan Ghozlan and Ahmad Al Mahamid’s Alness home was targeted by officers following intelligence that someone at the address may have been sharing indecent images of children online.
Indecent videos and pictures of children, a number of which were the most severe category A, were found on both of their mobile phones.
Ghozlan, 43, and Al Mahamid, 50, who are Syrian refugees who arrived in the UK in 2016, appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court where they each pled guilty to a single charge of possessing indecent images of children.
Fiscal dispute Robert Weir told the court: “On 10 December 2021 police were granted a search warrant related to intelligence that occupants at that address were potentially in possession of indecent images of children which they had been sharing online.”
During the search, officers seized two Samsung mobile phones, one belonging to Ghozlan and one to Al Mahamid.
The phones were examined at the scene initially and later by the cyber crimes unit.
On Ghozlan’s phone, there were two accessible indecent images, one category A – the most severe – and one category B. There were two inaccessible images that were category C.
Category A videos on mobile phone
Three accessible videos, all of which were category A, were also found. The videos had a combined run time of four minutes and nine seconds.
On Al Mahamid’s device investigations uncovered five inaccessible indecent images of children, two of which were category A, the most severe. Two were category B and one category C.
There were also two inaccessible indecent videos of children, one category A and one category B, with a run time of one minute and 17 seconds.
Both Ghozlan and Al Mahamid had the Telegram messenger app installed and content was discovered within folders linked to the app.
‘Anything like that we delete’
During a police interview Ghozlan told officers: “Anything like that we delete. My husband sent me images saying ‘look what they sent me’.”
Sheriff Gary Aitken deferred sentencing on the couple, of Milnfua, Alness, to next month to allow for the preparation of a criminal justice social work report and an assessment for the Moving Forward, Making Changes programme for sex offenders.
He placed them both on the sex offenders register with immediate effect, the eventual length of registration to be determined at sentencing.
