Child porn and terrorism....

An interesting link...

It is thought Islamist extremists are concealing messages in digital images and audio, video or other files.

Police are now investigating the link between terrorists and paedophilia in an attempt to unravel the system.

It could lead to the training of child welfare experts to identify signs of terrorist involvement as they monitor pornographic websites.

The move follows the discovery of sex abuse material during investigations into a number of advanced suspected plots.

It is not clear yet whether the terrorists chose child pornography because of a personal interest or merely because it represents a useful medium for disseminating information.

Security officials have been puzzled at the use of such offensive material by people claiming to be devoted to the teachings of Islam.

"It shows that these people are very confused. Here they are hating Western decadence but actually making use of it and finding that they enjoy this stuff," a source told the Times.

British police were first alerted to the link in 2006 when they investigated the possible terror links of a former Mujahideen fighter who preached at a London mosque. They discovered computerised images of child abuse.

Five years earlier an investigation of a mosque run by an al-Qaeda recruiter in Milan found child pornography that police believe contained encoded messages.

Baroness Neville-Jones, Conservative security spokesman and former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said: "The information about a possible link between extremism and child pornography potentially provides useful insight into three things: the methods that extremists use to communicate; the methods they use to target vulnerable people in society; and the techniques they seek to use to conceal their online activities."