R v Matloob Saliheen

This is a renewed application for permission to appeal conviction after refusal by the single judge. The applicant was given permission to address the court.

On 16 August 2024 in the Newcastle Crown Court before Mr Recorder Gordon and a Jury, the applicant, Matloob Saliheen, was convicted of three offences of Distributing Indecent Photographs of Children, contrary to section 1(1) (b) of the Protection of Children Act 1978 . On 26 October 2024 he was sentenced to concurrent Community Orders with Activity Requirements and Unpaid Work. This renewed application does not concern the sentence which was imposed on the applicant.

Following his conviction, the applicant sought permission to appeal against his conviction with grounds settled by counsel. The prosecution responded to those grounds and, after consideration on the papers, permission was refused by the Single Judge.

The applicant has subsequently raised fresh grounds of appeal, drafted by him and dated 21 October 2025. The prosecution has responded to each of the fresh grounds.

The facts of these offences may be shortly stated. In June 2020 the applicant's mobile phone was seized by the police following an unrelated police investigation into his conduct in relation to his partner. After analysis by the police there were two videos and one image which were of concern, subsequently confirmed to be indecent images of children. They were of male children between the ages of one and five, with focused attention drawn to their naked genitalia. The phone evidence showed that those images were received on the applicant's phone via the WhatsApp social media platform and were then forwarded on to various contacts of the applicant within the application.

When interviewed by the police in 2021, the applicant said that he had never seen the images, nor had he ever sent them to anyone. He suggested that his wife may have been responsible as she had access to his phone. Further enquiries established that this was not possible. In his defence statement, in the course of proceedings, the applicant accepted that the images were sent by his device, but he maintained that he had no recollection of receiving them or sending them to others. At trial the applicant's case was that the images were not themselves indecent and that, save admitting that he had opened one thumbnail image, there was no evidence that he had done the same with the two others. The issue for the jury was whether the images were indecent by the standards of decent, ordinary, right-thinking members of the public.

In the applicant's first grounds of appeal, he sought to argue that the trial judge made inappropriate comments which might have indicated his own views to the jury upon the central issue. The comments arose when the judge apologised that the jury were going to have to view the images, and also when telling them that they could not have the images to view themselves but must see them in court.

In the fresh grounds of appeal drafted by the applicant, he seeks to argue that there was unfair exclusion of defence evidence and inadequate explanation of the context of the messages being forwarded to his contacts; there was misleading and unfair presentation of the thumbnail files with a failure to prove that they were viewed; the applicant's case was adversely affected by the knowledge of false allegations in respect of the unrelated investigation by the police in 2020. The applicant supplemented his written grounds with short oral submissions, which effectively repeated the fresh grounds of appeal.

The prosecution has responded in detail to each of the fresh grounds and argue that there is no arguable merit in them.

We have considered carefully for ourselves the initial grounds of appeal for which permission to appeal was refused, and the fresh grounds, together with the detailed responses provided by the prosecution. We are not persuaded that there is any arguable merit in any of the grounds.

The issue for the jury was to assess whether the images recovered from the applicant's phone and admitted having been forwarded to contacts of the applicant were indecent. The applicant gave evidence before the jury which provided the opportunity for him to explain their context, as well as his initial denial of receipt or forwarding of the images. The jury were ideally placed to assess the evidence after careful and appropriate directions provided by the judge for which we find no arguable grounds of criticism.

Accordingly, we must refuse this renewed application for permission to appeal conviction, both on the original grounds and the fresh grounds drafted by the applicant.