GERMANY: A giant international child pornography ring, involving thousands of Internet users from 166 countries, has been smashed, German police said yesterday.Police and the interior ministry in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt said that, working with international investigators, they had "achieved one of the greatest successes" in fighting child pornography.
"We have destroyed one of the world's largest active international networks," said the region's justice minister, Mr Curt Becker. "Every case of child pornography is a document of the sexual abuse of a child. Every look at that image kills a child's soul," Mr Becker said last night.
Earlier this week, German police raided more than 500 houses across the country as part of Operation Marcy, a year-long investigation into child pornography.
Up to 1,500 police officers seized an astonishing haul: 745 computers, 35,500 CDs, 8,300 discs and 5,800 videos. Some 530 suspects in Germany are now being questioned, including priests, teachers and police officers.
The investigation was co-ordinated with Interpol and the German federal crime office, and led officers to 26,500 Internet users around the world, all of whom had swapped illegal images.
"The trail led everywhere," said a police spokesman in the eastern city of Magdeburg.
"It stretched from North America to South America, and from Saudi Arabia to Australia." The authorities in Germany uncovered a total of 38 Internet swap circles, featuring still pictures and film.
"The pictures became more brutal, and the children younger," said Ms Susanne Hofmeister, a spokeswoman for Magdeburg's federal prosecutor's office.
"We recovered one photo of a child only four months old. The people looking at these images came from all walks of life, and from all age groups. Many of them were actively working with children."
The investigation began in July 2002 when police raided the apartment of a 26-year-old man in Magdeburg.
They discovered on his computer the e-mail addresses of 1,000 pornographic "trading partners".
A court decision in the eastern city of Halle then forced an Internet service provider to turn over evidence it had on the suspects, including 38,000 e-mail addresses.
One man in the southern state of Bavaria was found to have 26,000 illicit photographs.
"According to the information we now have, many of the suspects are extremely dangerous paedophiles," said Mr Klaus Jeziorsky, Saxony-Anhalt's interior minister.