Computer technician Dicky Sze Ho-chun walks out of the Kowloon city law court building yesterday. Inset from top: Edison Chen, singer Gillian Chung and actress Cecilia Cheung, who are all embroiled in the scandal. [Edmond Tang/China Daily]

A computer technician accused of accessing private and intimate photos of entertainer Edison Chen and distributing them on the Internet has pleaded not guilty to three counts of obtaining access to a computer with a view to making a dishonest gain.

Dicky Sze Ho-chun, 24, is alleged to have copied thousands of images of Canto pop star Edison Chen Koon-hei engaged in sexual acts with actresses and celebrities, including Gillian Chung, Cecilia Cheung, Bobo Chan and Rachel Ngan.

Prosecutor Hayson Tse said that Sze's colleague, named Tse, saved the computer data from Chen's laptop on an external hard disk drive as backup when Chen took his machine to Elite Multimedia Ltd for repair between 2005 and 2006.

Sze allegedly copied the photos from the hard drive to a computer server connected to the Internet.

The lewd images were widely circulated on the Web in January, 2008. Sze was arrested on Feb 2 for distributing obscene articles but denied the charge.

"I didn't distribute the celebrity nude photos but I know my colleague repaired Chen's computer around Oct 2006," Sze was quoted as saying.

However, 11 of the photos were recovered from Sze's personal computer last year.

Tse added that Sze showed the images to two employees, Fanny Choi and Janet Leung, at a household store, which employed Elite Multimedia to service its computer.

The prosecutors quoted Choi and Leung saying that Sze told them how he accessed the images. The women said Sze gave them a CD containing 1,300 erotic pictures.

Choi and Leung will be called to testify today.

Chief Magistrate Tong Man also heard Chen's deposition, taken in Canada, in February.

Chen had declined to appear in a Hong Kong courtroom saying he feared for his safety in Hong Kong.

Chen stressed in his deposition that he was the sole user of all four computers involved in the case. He said he had not disclosed the passwords to those computers to anyone.

Only he and the women shown in the photos had seen the pictures, which were deleted from the digital cameras with which they were taken after Chen uploaded them on computers. None of the four women received copies.

Chen said he believed the pictures were stolen during a repair in 2006.

"They invaded my privacy and stole my things in a very direct way," he said.

The sex photo scandal destroyed Chen's entertainment career in Hong Kong, forcing him to take early retirement from the local industry last year. Sze, who doesn't have a criminal record, is on bail. If convicted, he could spend up to five years in jail. The trial at the Kowloon City Magistracy is expected to last another 10 days. Sixteen witnesses have been called.

(China Daily, April 8, 2009)