Pervert detained at airport in Portugal on European arrest warrant when he fled Leeds after being caught downloading horrific child sex abuse images

Pedro Fernandes absconded after he was arrested at his former home on Harrogate Road for accessing sickening images and movies of children aged as young as two years old being violent abused.

Fernandes was jailed for 21 months after Leeds Crown Court heard how he was on the run for almost three years after being given bail.

The 48-year-old Portuguese national was arrested at an airport in Lisbon on June 26 this year after West Yorkshire Police issued the European arrest warrant.

Geraldine Kelly, prosecuting, said officers seized computer equipment and electronic devices from the property on Harrogate Road on November 22, 2017.

Images and movies were discovered on a mobile phone, a laptop and two hard drives.

A total of 10,090 illegal still images and movies were recovered.

Ms Kelly said 1,306 images and 116 movies were at category A - the most serious level of offending.

One movie was 20 minutes in length and featured a three-year-old child in obvious physical pain.

Evidence was also found that Fernandes had used file sharing equipment and accessed the dark web to obtain images.

The offending took place from April 2014 up until his arrest in 2017.

The defendant left the country after being interviewed about the offending.

He had claimed he had accessed the material out of curiosity and said he had no sexual interest in children.

The defendant appeared in court via a video link from Armley jail.

He pleaded guilty to six counts making indecent images of a child.

The barrister said her client claimed he had not accessed the images for sexual gratification but wanted to identify the abusers in the images and help to bring them to justice.

She said: "He wasn't a member of the police force and it wasn't his job.

"He accepts that he downloaded high volumes of images but said it was not for his pleasure."

Judge Geoffrey Marson QC said: "I find that wholly incapable of belief."

"You made those searches over a period of years and you used some software that enabled dark web tracing impossible.

"You used file sharing software and there was an element of sophistication in your offending.

"As far as your reason for beginning to look for child images as a vigilante, I regard that as wholly incapable of belief.

"You have a sexual interest in children.

"Your lack of acknowledgement of that is something for serious concern.

"You have contributed to the degradation and inhumanity they were subjected to."