Ali Alghamdi was arrested on UNSW’S Randwick campus on Monday the 28th of July, after being caught with possession of over 25,000 child abuse videos and images.
The 35-year old Saudi Arabian national is on a student visa, working as an uber driver whilst completing his PHD in optometry at UNSW. His wife and two children, aged four and eight, arrived in Sydney last month.
Police told the SMH that, “… over 25,000 videos and images of child abuse material, including 42 marked as favourites…” were found on Alghamdi’s phone.
The student’s phone allegedly contained over 650 gigabytes worth of child abuse content, including children as young as two and four years old.
The material seen by the court has been said to be “too graphic to publish.”
He appealed for bail, which was unsuccessful on Tuesday.
He will return to court in September, and has been monitored since 2022, after searching child abuse material in the dark web.
Magistrate Micheal Barko said, “They searched devices which contained film which could only be said to be the most perturbing child sexual abuse”.