Townshend held on suspicion of three child porn offences Police seize computers in search of star's addresses

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: ''He has been arrested under the Protection of Children Act 1978 on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children, suspicion of making indecent images of children, and on suspicion of incitement to distribute indecent images of children.''

The arrest came two days after Townshend admitted paying to access a website advertising child pornography. He said he had done so purely for research purposes.

The police spokesman said two arrest warrants were executed at separate addresses in Richmond, Surrey, one residential and another business.

He said a number of items, including computers, were removed from the residential address for forensic examination. Officers from the major investigations team, part of the Child Protection command, are conducting the inquiry.

Townshend was escorted by detectives from his mansion in Richmond Hill, in south-west London, at 7.20pm. Police had arrived shortly before 3pm, accompanied by four detectives with computer forensics expertise, following an earlier arrangement with the rock star.

The Scotland Yard officers from its paedophile unit, major investigations team, and child protection unit are all attached to Operation Ore, the largest police investigation by British officers into online paedophilia and child pornography.

The inquiry has targeted Britons paying to access child pornography web-sites following information from the US. Townshend's name was included in a list of 7000 people in Britain whose identities were passed on to police by the FBI who smashed a US pay-per-view service.

It is believed more than 700 people in Scotland could face arrest as part of the operation. The number of arrests north of the border so far remains undisclosed, but includes at least two police officers. A constable from Paisley has been charged, and a constable from Aberdeen reported to the fiscal.

The search of Townshend's home took place after he said he was ready to hand his computer over to the police to prove he was not a paedophile. He said he wanted police to visit his home and check his computer for child porn.

He said he looked at the front pages and previews of child pornography sites perhaps three or four times after accidentally stumbling across one. But he said he never downloaded the material and entered a site only once, using a credit card, purely as part of research for a book he plans to publish later this year.

''I am not a paedophile. I'd be prepared to have my computer hard drive analysed. It's important police are able to convince themselves that if I did anything illegal I did it purely for research,'' he told The Sun newspaper yesterday.

Since his admission at the weekend, Townshend has been criticised by internet watchdogs, who dismissed his explanation for illegally entering the website as ''no excuse''. Mark Stephens, a lawyer and vice chairman of the Internet Watch Foundation, said: ''If you want to help children you don't pay money to a child porn site. We strongly discourage anyone from actively seeking out these images of child abuse because it is against the law.''

The rock star, who has been publicly supported by many celebrity friends, said he had been writing his childhood autobiography for the past seven years. He said he believed he had been sexually abused between the age of five and six-and-a-half when in the care of his maternal grandmother who was mentally ill.