UN employee with child pornography at Halifax

A United Nations employee was caught with child pornography as he entered the country last week at Halifax Stanfield International Airport.

Jose Antonio Ortega Osona, 40, a Spanish citizen who lives in New York, pleaded guilty Friday in Dartmouth provincial court to a Criminal Code charge of possessing child pornography and a Customs Act charge of smuggling prohibited goods.

Associate Chief Judge Brian Gibson, after giving Mr. Ortega Osona double credit for the nine days he spent on remand, sentenced him to serve an additional 72 days at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in Burnside.

Customs officers searched Mr. Ortega Osona’s personal belongings after he arrived at the airport on a flight from New York on April 9.

Portable memory devices found in his backpack contained more than 800 images of hard-core child pornography, some involving a girl who appeared to be about five years old.

Mr. Ortega Osona expects to lose his job as a demographer with the UN’s fertility division because of the convictions, defence lawyer Geoff Newton said.  “Any jail sentence he gets pales in comparison to the effects this will have on his life,” Mr. Newton said. Others debate whether this will occur!

Mr. Ortega Osona was ordered to provide a sample of his DNA for a national databank.

“We are committed to keeping this type of material out of our communities,” Andrew LeFrank, the Canada Border Services Agency’s director for Nova Scotia, said in a release.

“This seizure reaffirms our role in the efforts to prevent the exploitation of children in Canada and around the world.”