Britain: The detective who acted as liaison officer to the family of Soham murder victim Jessica Chapman, and a Crown Prosecution Service worker were arrested yesterday on suspicion of perverting the course of justice, police said.
Det Constable Brian Stevens (42) was held along with Ms Louise Austin (32), an administrator with the CPS, who has been suspended from her job.
Det Stevens had previously been arrested and charged with child sex and computer pornography offences, but the case against him collapsed at Snaresbrook Crown Court in London last month.
Ms Austin works in Cambridge and is said to have had a relationship with the officer before he was married. She is believed to have provided him with an alibi for one of the occasions when pornography was allegedly downloaded on to his computer.
Det Stevens, who works for Cambridgeshire Police, was arrested yesterday by West Midlands Police, who were the force called in to investigate the original child pornography allegations.
A West Midlands Police spokesman said "we have arrested a man and a woman from the Cambridge area for offences of perverting the course of justice. Those two people will be interviewed during the day and there may be further information later."
West Midlands Police did not name Det Stevens in the statement, but sources close to the case confirmed his name.
Det Stevens was cleared of the pornography charges after key evidence was found to contain "substantial errors".
The officer, who remains suspended by Cambridgeshire police pending an internal investigation, spoke at the time of his "tremendous relief" when he walked free from court.
He was cleared due to flaws in evidence produced by the prosecution to make the case that only he could have been responsible for images found on his computer. After the case, Det Stevens, a father of two, offered no explanation as to how the images got there.
His name appeared on a list of 279 suspected paedophiles handed to Cambridgeshire Police in early July last year as part of Operation Ore, triggered by a US Postal Service inquiry into pay-per-view child porn websites in Texas.
In police interviews Det Stevens "persistently denied" that he had downloaded the images, that he had known they were on the computer or that he was the only person to use the laptop.
The child abuse allegations were dropped after prosecutors learned of a personal tragedy affecting one complainant. The court also heard that one of the girls giving evidence against him changed her statement.