"I am very clear that we had sufficient evidence and in a legal sense, our actions were correct," assistant police
commissioner Vincent Wong Fook-chuen told reporters afterwards.

"We followed regular procedures so I don't think we did anything wrong, it was just that there were different views on whether the photograph was indecent or obscene," Wong added.

Chung, dodged a media scrum outside the courthouse and left without making a comment.

To date, a territory-wide police investigation has led to nine arrests including Chung and several staff of a computer shop where over 1,300 obscene images were stolen from Edison Chen's laptop computer while it was being serviced, police said.

Tabloid newspaper in star-obsessed Hong Kong have devoted blanket coverage to the scandal, which has seemingly snared at least six stars including actress Cecilia Chung, singer Gillian Chung, Hollywood actress Maggie Q and Taiwan's Jolin Tsai.

Besides igniting debate about sexual morality, with schoolchildren among those spreading the images - the police
crackdown has sparked fears of Web censorship and a curtailing of Internet privacy rights.

"The police were a bit panicked two weeks ago, and they felt the pressure or the concern of the public," said James To, a legislator and deputy Chairman of the legislative council's Security panel.

"They wanted to silence the whole internet community, so therefore they just picked out one person (Chung) to be the scapegoat to prosecute ... to deter other people from further distributing the articles," To added.

Chen, the Canadian-born rap singer and actor, will give a press conference on Sunday in Hong Kong, the Apple Daily newspaper reported.

(Reporting by James Pomfret; Editing by David Fox)