05/03/2021 15:13
Clarín.com
World
Updated 05/03/2021 3:13 PM
With the arrest of four German suspects, one of them hiding in Paraguay, the German police announced on Monday the dismantling of
one of the largest child pornography networks in
the world.
The dismantling of the "Boystown" platform, which had existed on the deep web since 2019 and
had more than 400,000 members
, occurred in mid-April and four suspects were arrested, according to a police statement.
The "deep web" refers to the set of sites and web pages and databases that the usual search engines, such as Google, Mozilla Firefox and others, cannot find and therefore do not index in their engines.
It is used to traffic drugs, weapons and child pornography.
"The platform
had an international reach
and was used for the exchange of child pornography among its members," the statement issued by the AFP agency clarified.
The contents, which
included videos and photos
, included "images of serious sexual abuse against very young children," police said.
Four Germans arrested
Three Germans were arrested in their country
after an investigation of several months by a special unit of the German Police, under the coordination of the European Police Office (Europol) and with the collaboration of the Dutch, Swedish, Australian, American and Canadian police. .
A fourth suspect, also German, was arrested in Paraguay - where he resides - at the request of the Berlin authorities.
An international arrest warrant weighed on this man, for which he will possibly be handed over to the German authorities in the next few days.
Three of the detainees,
aged 40, 49 and 58
, are suspected of "having been the administrators of the child pornography platform."
In addition to taking over the management of the network, they also did "the monitoring of customers," said the police.
Eva Kühne-Hörmann, Minister of Justice for the German region of Hesse, called the operation "a fantastic success in the fight against sexual violence against minors".
In recent years, Germany has dismantled several of these criminal networks.
Source agencies
AFG
Look also
“Disgusting”, Podolski's harsh message against Metzelder, his former partner sentenced for distributing child pornography
Christoph Metzelder's confession: he accepted sharing child pornography and apologized to victims