Eric Eoin Marques, the man who was arrested in August and accused by the FBI of being “the largest facilitator of child porn in the world, wants to be prosecuted in Ireland.
Marques is accused of being the man behind Freedom Hosting, once the most important anonymous hosting service on the Deep Web and host to the largest collections of child pornography online.
Lawyers for Marques, who lived and was arrested in Ireland, made “a submission to the Director of Public Prosecutions on Section 15 of the Extradition Act, which relates to not extraditing a defendant when the alleged offence was commited in Ireland,” reports the Irish Examiner. Marques is a citizen of both the United States and Ireland.
In its extradition request, the FBI alleged that Marques moved $1.5 million through his bank accounts last year. He was denied bail on the grounds that he was a flight risk, based on his reported research into fake identification documents and travelling to Russia.
Marques has been charged with four counts, including the advertising and distribution of child pornography. He faces up to 100 years in prison if convicted in the U.S.
H/T Irish Examiner | Illustration by Jason Reed