Suicide of Amanda Todd | Accused found guilty on all counts against him

(New Westminster) The Dutch man accused of online harassment of British Columbia teenager Amanda Todd, who later committed suicide, was found guilty on all counts by a jury on Saturday.

Aydin Coban was charged with extortion, criminal harassment, communicating with a teenage girl to commit a sexual offense and two counts of possession of child pornography. The jury needed less than 24 hours of deliberation before reaching this verdict.

Amandao Todd was just 15 when she took her own life in 2012 after posting a video about how she was bullied online.

Corban pleaded not guilty at the start of the trial in June. In her instructions to the jury, judge Martha Devlin recalled that the Dutchman was not charged with the death of Amanda Todd.

Crown attorney Louise Kenworthy concluded her closing arguments on Tuesday by saying there was a “treasure trove of information” linking Aydin Coban to the harassment and extortion of Amanda Todd.

When the trial began nearly two months ago, the Crown told the jury that Amanda Todd had been the victim of a persistent online ‘sextortion’ campaign before her death at the age of 15 in October 2012 .

Earlier in the trial, Crown prosecutor Marcel Daigle cited testimony from a Dutch police officer who said a deleted video file called “AmandaTodd.wmv” was played on one of the devices in December 2010, which corresponds to a time when Amanda Todd was actively harassed.

The defendant’s attorney, Joseph Saulnier, had told the jury that the evidence presented “does not support the existence of a child pornography data file on Amanda Todd”.

A Dutch court had approved Corban’s extradition to Canada.

The individual was sentenced to nearly 11 years in prison after being found guilty in 2017 of harassing dozens of girls and young gay men on the internet.