It’s the Spanish police’s biggest crackdown yet on child pornography, leading to 121 arrests with another 96 accused of possessing and distributing the pedophile material.
The arrests were made over the past week and were part of an operation that started in July 2007, with the help of Brazilian police.
More than 800 Spanish and Brazilian police officers took part in the nationwide raids which uncovered a network of child pornography that spanned 75 countries. It involved 18,000 IP addresses across the world, including 1,600 in Spain.
More than 250 homes were raided, and 347 hard drives, 1,186 CDs and DVDs and 36 laptops were confiscated.
The police revealed that two of the suspects had involved their own children, and four of those arrested were minors.
The nature of the material is extreme and violent.
Manuel Vazquez, from Spain’s technology police force, said: “During this operation, we found thousands of pictures of very small children being abused and raped and other very rough material.”
Those arrested come from many backgrounds, including: bank clerks, porters, airline pilots and pensioners. The majority of them are Spanish.
The Spanish police has a good record when it comes to dealing with child pornography and was recently awarded by Unicef, the UN children’s agency.
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