One thing that has previously been mentioned over and over on WR is speculation that in the event of a legal dispute, the WMF would gladly throw individual contributors under the bus in order to avoid liability for themselves. We can now see that that speculation was right: this is precisely what is being done with Dcoetzee.
The "conflict of interest" mentioned as a reason for Dcoetzee's desysopping is obviously to be interpreted as a conflict between his own interests (delete the images in order to avoid legal hassle) and the interests of the WMF (prevent him from deleting the images, so that they are preserved with a record of him being the uploader, thereby making him the recipient of legal proceedings). Because if Dcoetzee was allowed to delete the images, any admin undeleting them might actually put himself into a position of liability. And if that admin is an official representative of the WMF.....
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