GARDAÍ IN Co Cork are preparing a file for the Director of Public Prosecutions after releasing without charge a 52-year-old man questioned about the seizure of a large quantity of child pornography.
The man was arrested at his home in east Cork shortly after 7am on Wednesday under section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act and brought to Midleton Garda station for questioning about the discovery of more than 20,000 images of child pornography.
The images had been seized by gardaí when they raided the man's home in east Cork last September and sent for analysis by experts at the Garda Computer Crime Investigation Unit in Harcourt Street, Dublin.
The raid on the man's home came as part of "Operation Penalty", set up last summer on foot of information from German police when they smashed an internet child pornography ring last year in the eastern state of Sachsen-Anhalt.
The German investigation led to the arrest of more than 300 people in Sachsen-Anhalt as well as the identification of international links with child pornography users in some 70 countries, including Ireland.
The Cork suspect was traced after German police found links on a file connecting him with one of the child porn sites and the data was passed through Interpol to the Garda Síochána, who subsequently raided the man's home.