Lieutenant Erik Verstraten testified Tuesday in the trial of Aydin Coban, who is charged with five counts, including extortion and possession of child pornography in connection with the online harassment of a Port Coquitlam teenager who committed suicide in 2012. Verstratten is one of a number of Dutch witnesses expected to testify in the BC Supreme Court trial in New Westminster in the coming weeks. Crown said investigators in the Netherlands were the key to finding evidence against Coban – who is accused of using a series of 22 fake social media accounts to demand what he called “sex shows” by Amanda Todd with in exchange for promises not to publish graphic images. of its Internet exposure. Koban pleaded not guilty.
“I felt something move”
Speaking in English, Verstraten told the judge and jurors that he was a member of a child abuse investigation team on January 13 and 14, 2014, when a group of Dutch police officers went down to the holiday bungalow where Coban was arrested. The investigation started under the guidance of the prosecutor a few minutes before 23.00 and ended shortly after 3 in the morning of the next day. The arrest took place in the following hours. Dutch National Lieutenant Erik Verstraten, pictured here outside the BC Supreme Court in New Westminster on Tuesday, was one of the officers investigating a holiday bungalow where Aydin Coban was arrested in January 2014. Verstraten testified in Coban. (Jason Proctor / CBC) Verstraten said he and a companion returned to the bungalow in the afternoon, one of them searching the rooms clockwise while the other went counterclockwise to make sure they had not lost anything from the previous night. The officer said his suspicions were sparked by the discovery of a stereo and speaker unit in a box with the stereo component unrolled and the speakers still wrapped. “I thought it was strange that the middle section opened while the speaker sets were wrapped and sealed,” Verstraten said. “When I picked it up from the box, I felt something moving inside.” A prosecutor showed Werstratten a series of photographs taken at the time, which showed a beige box that police said was found as soon as the outer shell of the stereo was removed. He said the box contained a Dutch passport in Koban’s name, along with two envelopes holding bundles of cash wrapped in rubber bands, totaling 10,000 euros. A picture of a holiday bungalow on which Aydin Coban lived when he was arrested in 2014 was recorded as evidence in the trial. Lieutenant Erik Verstraten said police found the hidden cash, passport and hard drive in a stereo box while searching the bungalow. (BC Supreme Court) The photo evidence included a photo of the passport ID page showing Coban’s photo and name, as well as footage of the money. Verstraten said police also found a Samsung hard drive with a USB connection cable in the box. He said all the evidence confiscated from the house was taken to a presumption room in the Dutch’s child exploitation unit. The officer said he was also present a few weeks after the search generated cash and a passport to inspect a wireless router at a cottage near the bungalow where Koban was living alone at the time of his arrest. Crown said Coban was using his neighbor’s wifi to access the Internet. After a cross-examination, the defense suggested that the house where the search took place was some distance from the router and that the trees in the very wooded area would block access. Verstraten said he did not see any hard cables running from the outside to the router.
A child friend testifies
Coban was extradited from the Netherlands in 2020 to stand trial in BC One of his childhood friends also testified on Tuesday, appearing via video from the Netherlands. Amanda Todd is seen in a photo filed in the trial of the man accused of blackmailing and harassing the teenager. Todd died in October 2012. (BC Supreme Court) Adem Gokcinar said he moved from Turkey to the Netherlands at the age of five. He met Koban while playing in the street as a little boy. Later they went to the same school and spoke Dutch and Turkish together. Gokcinar said he lost contact with Coban but decided to reconnect in 2011. He said the accused was living in a holiday park when they started talking again and helped him move to a holiday bungalow a few months before Coban was arrested. The 46-year-old said the two men had a common interest in music, art, philosophy and religion and would meet about once a week for four hours at a time. Gokcinar confirmed that Coban appeared to be living alone and that he had a laptop and personal computer. By contrast, Gokcinar agreed that Coban was a “computer dude” printing leaflets at some point advertising his services as someone who could repair computers and repair old hard drives. He agreed that there were no wires from Koban’s house to another residence.
