Police who conducted the UK's biggest ever child-porn investigation are facing legal action from former suspects who say their lives have been ruined.
About 30 people, including a number from Scotland, have put their names to a class action set to be launched against detectives behind Operation Ore.
They claim their lives have been devastated by an investigation which has left hundreds of innocent people tarred by the same brush as the guilty. And they say they have secured evidence which shows that the basis for the investigation was false.
But police insist they followed the correct procedures, while child welfare campaigners said the investigation proved paedophiles had "no place to hide".
Operation Ore was launched four years ago after the credit- card details of 7,200 people believed to have paid for child porn on the internet were supplied to British police by US detectives. More than 2,000 people have been convicted.
Scotland's eight police forces investigated 420 names on the list, which was passed to them by the National Crime Squad. About 250 homes were searched, and over 500 computers and accessories seized. Some 120 arrests were made and just over 100 were convicted.
Police suspected those on the list of having paid for child porn through a website called Landslide, which provided access to 300 adult sites.
But the group behind the legal action claims the UK investigation was seriously flawed. It says it has obtained the original Landslide database which proves that the police's central claim - that everyone entering the site had to go through a banner marked "click here (for) child porn" - was false.
It also claims to have found evidence of major credit-card fraud, which means some people's details appeared on the site without their knowledge.
Most of those involved in the class action, including at least two Scots, were later cleared of wrongdoing. A few, however, were convicted of offences but are protesting their innocence.
Brian Rothery, who is organising the class action, said there had been a huge human cost to the investigation, with at least 35 people in the UK having committed suicide.
"Huge numbers of lives have been destroyed by this. I am hoping hundreds of other innocent people will come forward," said Mr Rothery, from Ireland, who was not among those investigated under Operation Ore.
Chris Saltrese, who specialises in defending people falsely accused of sexual offences, has been enlisted to fight the case ......
Acknowledgement