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One of Britain's worst paedophiles - who groomed and abused up to 200 babies and children abroad - has been stabbed to death in prison, it is reported.

Former English teacher and photographer Richard Huckle kept a "Pedopoints ledger" and bragged on the "dark web" about his horrific sex crimes against Malaysian children as young as six months.

Huckle, who was serving 22 life terms, was found dead his cell at HMP Full Sutton, near Pocklington in East Yorkshire, on Sunday after being attacked with a shank, or makeshift knife, it is reported.

Dubbed the "gap year paedophile", the 33-year-old, from Ashford, Kent, was jailed in June 2016 after admitting an unprecedented 71 charges of sex abuse against children under 12.

When he was sent down a friend of one victim shouted from the public gallery "1,000 deaths is too good for you".

(Image: AFP)

Huckle - who shared photos and videos of his assaults with paedophiles worldwide through a dark website called The Love Zone - was ordered to serve at least 25 years in prison for his "campaign of rape" spanning nine years.

He was being held at Full Sutton, prison for men in categories A and B about 10 miles east of York.

It holds some of the most difficult and dangerous criminals in the country, with a capacity for almost 560 inmates.

As he carried out his horrific crimes, Huckle tried to make a business out of them by crowd-funding the release of the images.

(Image: Central News)

Huckle, a Baptist churchgoer, posed as a philanthropist and English teacher and used his religion to prey on vulnerable children.

He was compiling a paedophile's manual at the time of his arrest by the National Crime Agency.

Twenty-three children from poor Christian communities in Kuala Lumpur were identified in 71 charges, although Huckle's tally of abuse which he catalogued on a 'Pedopoints ledger' was much higher.

He first visited Malaysia on a teaching gap year when he was 19 and went on to groom more children posing as a respectable Christian English teacher and philanthropist.

Five of the youngsters were living in a children's home and on one occasion he took a girl out to celebrate her fifth birthday and molested her at his house in Kuala Lumpur.

(Image: Andy Stenning/Daily Mirror)

Huckle, who studied IT at university in Malaysia, was arrested by National Crime Agency officials as he arrived at Gatwick Airport en route to spend Christmas with his family in 2014.

Officers seized Huckle's encrypted laptop and managed to uncover more than 20,000 indecent pictures and videos although there were other files they were unable to crack.

They found Huckle's paedophile manual called Paedophiles And Poverty: Child Lover Guide and a 'Pedopoints ledger' in which he awarded himself marks for the abuse of 191 girls and boys.

In online posts, Huckle bragged: "Impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle-class western kids."

Commenting on one of his victims, he boasted: "I'd hit the jackpot, a 3yo girl as loyal to me as my dog and nobody seemed to care."

Related video: Statement after Huckle sentenced in June 2016

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Huckle crowd-funded the release of indecent images of the three-year-old girl in exchange for Bitcoins, achieving 105 per cent of his target.

His parents were so horrified when he confessed his crimes that they begged police to take him away and made statements to support his prosecution.

In a 2013 posting he outlined his plan to marry one of his victims in order to help him abuse more children.

When he was sentenced three years ago, a judge told him his "self-delusion knows no bounds" and the 60-page paedophile manual he had written was a "truly evil document".

Judge Peter Rook QC said at the time: "You were and are sexually obsessed with children. You have spent years abusing them. In one of your postings you stated that you had become consumed by your paedophilia.

"It is clear from your postings on hidden encrypted paedophile websites on the dark web, and from the manual you were in the process of drafting, that your life revolved around your obsession with your own sexual gratification by child sex abuse.

"It is also clear that, had you not been arrested, you planned to continue the same lifestyle using the expertise that you were keen to show off to and share with other abusers so as to continue your sexual exploitation of the children of such communities."

A Prison Service spokesman told Mirror Online: “HMP Full Sutton prisoner Richard Huckle died on 13 October.

“It would be inappropriate to comment further while a police investigation is ongoing.”