Rock legend Pete Townshend free after child porn arrest

LONDON -- Rock guitarist Pete Townshend was released from police custody Tuesday, resting at home after his arrest on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children, his lawyer said.

Police questioned the founding member of The Who at a southwest London police station for an hour and 20 minutes Monday night, releasing him shortly after midnight, nearly five hours after he was first detained.

A police spokesman said the legendary musician had signed an agreement saying he would return to the station later this month.

The rock star has not been charged with a crime. Under British law, suspects are not charged immediately upon arrest and some arrested people are eventually released without being charged.

Police did not officially identify him as a suspect, saying only that they had arrested a 57-year-old man on suspicion of making and possessing indecent images of children and of incitement to distribute them. A police spokesman confirmed privately that the suspect was Townshend.

Officers searched his home in Richmond, Surrey, outside London, Monday afternoon and said they had removed computers and were examining them.

In a statement on Saturday, Townshend said that on one occasion he had used a credit card to enter a site advertising child pornography. But he said he was not a pedophile and was only doing research for an autobiography dealing with his own suspected childhood sexual abuse.

He made the admission after a newspaper reported detectives were investigating an unidentified British rock star for downloading child pornography.

In Monday's edition of The Sun newspaper, Townshend said he did not download the images and was willing to have police examine his computer hard drive to exonerate him.

Singer Roger Daltrey, Townshend's bandmate from The Who, said he believed the guitarist was innocent.

"My gut instinct is that he is not a pedophile, and I know him better than most," he was quoted by The Sun tabloid as saying. "Pete has perhaps been a little naive the way he has gone about it, but I believe his intentions are good."

The star's arrest was part of Operation Ore, the British arm of an FBI-led crackdown on people who view child pornography on the Internet.

American investigators traced 250,000 suspected pedophiles around the world through credit card details they used on child porn sites and gave the names of British suspects to police here. British police have so far arrested 1,300 suspects.