A sickness beneficiary who allegedly possessed sexually-explicit images of pre-teen girls told police his computer contained thousands of images of "redheads", a court has heard.
Paul Fraser, 51, of Kaitaia, pleaded not guilty in the Whangarei District Court yesterday to 10 charges of possessing objectionable material and elected a judge-alone trial.
Fraser was spoken to by police during Operation Sledgehammer in October 2009 after Interpol alerted New Zealand police about objectionable images being downloaded in this country from a Croatian website.
Giving evidence in court yesterday, Detective Edward Evans said he executed a warrant at Fraser's rented property in Kaitaia and questioned him on whether he had any objectionable material.
He said Fraser's reply was that he possessed pictures of girls on his computer only.