Berlin police shut down an internet platform that operated in Darknet and had 400,000 pedophiles members • Authorities: "The forum included severe sexual abuse of toddlers"
Berlin Police (Illustration)
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One of the world's largest Darknet platforms for child pornography, which had 400,000 pedophile members from around the world, closed.
Darknet - known as the Dark Web - is not accessible to regular users worldwide, and requires special technological operations to operate on it.
The platform's name was called Boystown - the city of children - and was intended by the authorities to be a "trading place for child pornography" and in fact a pedophile forum that included: "severe sexual abuse in toddlers".
Four men were arrested on suspicion of operating the network and instructing members on how to evade authorities.
Three of the men, aged 40 to 64, were arrested in a raid on their home in Germany while another man was arrested in Paraguay.
The investigation was closely co-operated by law enforcement agencies in the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States and Canada, and was coordinated by Europol, the integrated body of police bodies in the European Union.