July 2011 Indecent images man free as sentence is cut A FORMER hotel manager found guilty of possessing indecent images of children had his sentence slashed by the Court of Appeal. Mark Gunter, who was 46 when he was sentenced in March, saw his 15-month sentence cut to three, meaning he would be released immediately. Gunter was found in possession of 505 indecent images on a desktop computer and a laptop. Most of the pictures were of children aged 13 and younger. A total of 501 of these images were of category one, while three were single images of levels three and four, and two of five. Five is the most serious. However, presiding judge Jonathan Sumption, QC, said the category five images should have been reclassified at a lower level. Mr Sumption criticised the Guernsey courts in his summing up, saying they should follow the guidelines set in the UK.   March 2011 Hotel manager is jailed for fifteen months for 505 child abuse images AN INQUIRY into child abuse images that began in Belarus in 2007 led investigators to a Guernsey resident’s door. Operation Tornado targeted people who subscribed to websites that featured indecent images of children and in January 2009 it led to Mark Gunter, the Royal Court was told. A computer tower and a laptop were seized and Gunter, 46, who was a hotel manager at the time, was arrested. Gunter pleaded guilty to a total of seven charges of possessing indecent images of children. Gunter was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment on the tower offences and 12 months for the laptop, meaning he will spend up to 15 months in prison.