Alex Trelinski
THREE people including two underage teenagers have been arrested in the Madrid region for possessing and distributing child pornography.
Two others in Murcia and Alcoy in Alicante Province are being investigated for sharing the obscene material via instant messaging apps.
Thanks to collaboration with Interpol, five people in Columbia and two in Brazil were also detained for being part of the network.
Concerned citizens contacted the police after seeing inappropriate images being distributed on prominent messaging apps.
Home searches in Spain by the Policia Nacional saw the seizure of eight mobile phones and supporting equipment containing child pornography.
One of the arrested children used emails to distribute the material, with the emails disappearing shortly after being sent so as not to leave a trace.
Despite erasing much of the content from his computer during a police raid, officers recovered a video and several USB devices that the teenager had hidden away at his home.
The other boy had a very active profile in numerous online groups and police took away his phone crammed with pornographic material.
Footage was either posted directly to message group members or via links to cloud storage pages.
The second option of receiving the illegal videos was used by those who wanted to keep their identity secret.
