Amsterdam-based Russell Tricker denies knowing political sensitivity of confiscated video
By Mark Conrad and Mark Watts | 29 March 2014
Businessman Russell Tricker claims to have no idea why Customs officers confiscated “indecent or obscene” films and videos from him at Dover in 1982.
The seizure notice shows that Customs took custody of three 8mm films, three video cassettes and an “order form”. The items, according to the notice, “have been seized as liable to forfeiture upon the grounds that the said goods are indecent or obscene articles.”
It continued: “If any of the said articles is in itself not indecent, it was mixed or packed with an indecent or obscene article liable to forfeiture under the customs and excise acts.”
Customs seized the items at the port of Dover in January 1982.
The seizure notice was dated August 1982, and addressed to Tricker, a British national of Ruysdaelkade in Amsterdam, Holland.
Tricker used the address as the base for Toff’s Apartments, which offered rooms and flats that were advertised in gay guides as holiday lets. He also ran a coach company, Toff’s Travel, from the same address.
The notice gave brief details of some of the seized material. One video cassette was entitled, ‘GB10’.
A victim of child sex abuse in Amsterdam who is familiar with the video told Exaro that it showed boys, some of them “runaways”, who could be “ordered” by paedophile clients.
“This was a tape of British boys who were for sale to clients,” he said.
Another video cassette was called, ‘Amsterdam Tramway Museum’, and featured images of boys from elsewhere in Europe who could be ordered. The video started with a few minutes of train footage before it reached pornographic images of boys.
Exaro tracked Tricker to his new home on the outskirts of Amsterdam. He confirmed that he was stopped by Customs officials when travelling through Dover in 1982. He said that he was a coach passenger.
But he claimed that he did not know what was inside the sealed packages. He told Exaro: “I have nothing to hide. I was asked to take some brown envelopes to England. They were seized by Customs. I did not know what was inside them.”
Tricker said that a business associate had asked him to take the packages into the country, then to post them to a UK address.
Asked whether he was aware of claims that an ex-minister and child sex abuse featured on one of the videos, Tricker denied any knowledge of the content.
“They were just confiscated, and I was allowed to continue my journey. They detained me for two hours,” he said.
Tricker confirmed that he was convicted of a child-sex offence in Holland in 1992. He said that he was jailed for two-and-a-half years, but was released after five months after being cleared on appeal. He denied that he was a paedophile.
His lawyers were able to show that the boy concerned had a false identity card and had pretended to be above age, Tricker said.
The boy was later shot dead in Amsterdam, he said. “It is a sad story,” he added.
Tricker also confirmed that he was a personal friend of Peter Glencross, who was commercial manager of Spartacus International. At the time, Spartacus International was used to attract members to the Spartacus Club, an underground paedophile network.
A German company has since taken over Spartacus International, and transformed it into a respectable publisher of gay guides.
Tricker also admitted a link with the notorious British paedophile, Warwick Spinks. Tricker said that he and Spinks “go back a long way.”
“Do not say that I realised from the beginning that he was up to no good, because that is not true.”
Spinks was jailed in 1995 for a sexual offence against a boy in Hastings, Sussex.
After being released in 1997, Spinks breached his parole conditions and fled to Prague, capital of the Czech Republic. Spinks was re-arrested when he entered the UK in November 2012, but released just months later.
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