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Investigations against child pornography and sexual abuse (archive image)
Photo: Arne Dedert / dpa
Investigators from the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) have been searching more than 40 apartments and other rooms in Berlin since early Wednesday morning.
According to the police, 42 men are suspected of having consumed and distributed child pornographic images.
According to Norma Schürmann, the responsible department head in the LKA, the suspects are between 17 and 84 years old.
Two thirds of the men are said to be known to the police.
250 police officers were on duty.
The searches are not about related cases, but about individual investigations, said Schürmann.
The aim is to seize computers, cell phones and other data carriers.
There were no arrests, said Schürmann.
Further raids planned
According to the LKA, the risk for perpetrators of child pornography offenses has increased significantly in recent years.
In the USA, network operators would use algorithms to crawl data traffic and report suspected cases to the police.
Many cases then also reached the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the State Criminal Police Offices via the international exchange.
The responsible areas would be expanded accordingly in Berlin.
Further individual searches and raids are to be expected again and again.
As recently as the beginning of May, the Bavarian police searched 49 objects in a child pornography raid, and 51 suspects were identified.
The perpetrators come from "all age groups, all occupational groups, all social classes and all regions," it said.
Shortly before, the BKA had announced that one of the world's largest child pornography platforms on the Internet had been broken up.
Several men were arrested as suspected operators in Germany.
The darknet platform is said to have had more than 400,000 members in many countries.
The shared image and video recordings also included recordings of the most serious sexual abuse of young children.
ala / dpa
