Meehan denies child porn charges

Craig Meehan has pleaded not guilty to all charges

The former partner of Shannon Matthews' mother has told a court indecent images of children found on his computer had nothing to do with him.

Craig Meehan, 22, is accused of having 134 indecent images on a computer at the home he shared with Karen Matthews in Dewsbury Moor, West Yorkshire.

Police found the images during their search for missing Shannon Matthews.

Prosecutor David Holderness told Dewsbury magistrates Mr Meehan had pointed the finger at other people.

He said Mr Meehan claimed other people had used his password-protected computer.

There are substantial amounts of material which, when put together, provide a convincing and overwhelming picture that it was Mr Meehan who was the person who downloaded the relevant materials Prosecutor David Holderness

Detectives seized the computer from the home the day after nine-year-old Shannon went missing in February, the court was told.

Mr Holderness said the former supermarket fishmonger faced charges which referred to 134 indecent images of children.

He said 133 of these were found on a second-hand computer Mr Meehan had bought in 2006. The other was found on his mobile phone.

The prosecutor said 16 of the images were classified as level four in a scale of one to five, where five is the most serious.

The majority of the images were classified as level one with others at level two and three.

Mr Holderness said: "There are substantial amounts of material which, when put together, provide a convincing and overwhelming picture that it was Mr Meehan who was the person who downloaded the relevant materials."

He said part of the prosecution case would be matching the times at which the images were downloaded with Mr Meehan's work record.

Mr Meehan denies all the charges.

The hearing is expected to last five days.