Nineteen have been arrested in Spain and five hundred more were either arrested or expected to be in custody shortly, in a twelve-nation Internet child porn crackdown covering Europe and Latin America and hooked around child porn distributed through a Spanish-language online chat room, Spain’s Interior Ministry said March 16.
Law enforcement was reported making simultaneous searches of homes in Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Chile, Argentina, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay, the Interior Ministry said, finding so far over twenty thousand items including videos, photographs, MP3 files containing child porn.
This operation began in January, after a Spaniard complained about what were called “highly aggressive” photographs involving “very young children” available through the chat room, the ministry added, with Spanish police monitoring the site to learn who was the source of the material.
From there, the ministry continued, police tracked over nine hundred connections aroud the world in a two-week period, before the Spanish government informed two organizations coordinating judicial cooperation in Europe and Latin America, Eurojust and IbeRed.
Judges from all the countries involved in the sweep joined planning meetings before the March 16 sweep, the Interior Ministry said.
