Alex Trelinski
A MAJOR operation against child pornography distribution and production in Spain has seen 121 people arrested – all of whom used the same digital platform to obtain and share illegal content.
The Policia Nacional said eight of those detained were from the Murcia region as well as an Alicante province man.
The force described it as one of its ‘most important’ operations against users and distributors of child pornography with 46 regional cybercrime units involved.
125 searches were carried out throughout Spain in which 368 hard drives, 114 USB flash drives, 100 DVDs, 60 computers and other computer equipment were seized.
118 men and three woman were detained for possessing a total of 500 terrabytes of ‘extremely harsh’ content involving children.
In the Alicante arrest, a man was found in possession of explicit images featuring two young children that had been recorded at his home.
Another arrest- carried out in Madrid- involved a man who had over two million files featuring very young girls.
Many of the videos had a high degree of violence and were distributed across ten large-capacity hard drives.
Investigators discovered that the 54-year-old detainee had travelled numerous times in recent years to Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Burma- sex tourism destinations where legislation is more lax.
All of the material seized by the police will be thoroughly analysed to identify victims of sexual abuse as well as finding contacts of the detainees who were part of the paedophile ring.
READ MORE:
- Police in Spain’s Barcelona province arrest minor for allegedly using artificial intelligence to create child pornography
- Child pornography and drugs gang busted in Spain’s Costa Blanca
- Six arrests made for child pornography distribution in Spain
