PARIS: A senior Japanese Football Association official has been sentenced to an 18-month suspended jail term in France after looking at images of child sexual abuse during a plane journey, a court official said Tuesday.

Masanaga Kageyama, the association’s technical director, was arrested during a stopover at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on the way to Chile last week, according to Le Parisien newspaper.

It is believed he was heading to the Under-20 World Cup in Chile.

“The facts were discovered by the plane’s flight crew, who raised the alarm after noticing that the convicted man was viewing child pornography images on the plane,” the court prosecutor’s office in Bobigny, north of Paris, told AFP.

The court sentenced the 58-year-old on Monday to a suspended jail term of 18 months and a fine of 5,000 euros ($5,830) for importing, possessing, recording or saving pornographic images of a minor under the age of 15.

His sentence includes a ban on working with minors for 10 years and a ban on returning to France for the next decade.

Kageyama will also be added to the French national sex offenders’ register.

The football association (JTA) said he would be sacked immediately.

Le Parisien reported that flight attendants caught him viewing the images on his laptop in the business class cabin of an Air France flight.

He claimed to be an artist and insisted the photos had been generated by artificial intelligence.

The report said that during his court appearance he admitted viewing the images, that he did not realise it was illegal in France and that he was ashamed.

He was held in police custody over the weekend until his court appearance on Monday. He was released after the hearing.

Kageyama is responsible for implementing measures to strengthen Japan’s football teams including the national team, as well as educating coaches and nurturing youth players.

He was a professional J-League footballer himself and also coached several J-League clubs. He had also managed Japan’s under-20, under-19 and under-18 teams.

AFP