Italian police on Friday arrested 34
people in a huge operation targetting the publication and
distribution of child pornography on the Internet.
They also staged over 100 searches in 56 cities in what the
postal police said is one of the largest operations of its kind
ever carried out in Italy.
The op was coordinated by the Catania public prosecutor's
office.
Thousands of kids were victims of the gang, some of them as
young as three, police said.
The investigation revealed the presence of child pornography
chats within a social network, not among the most popular, said
Catania Chief Prosecutor Francesco Curcio.
"Some of these were frequented by people who had nicknames like
'niño con animales' (child with animals)and 'niño primeros da
zero a sei anni' (little kids from zero to six years).
"The investigation deals with extremely serious facts with
thousands of children who will remain scarred by these abuses.
"The Postal Police of Catania has opened a Pandora's box,
confirming that on the web they are trying to hide metastases
that are circulating like crazy", the prosecutor added.
Two of those arrested, in addition to holding thousands of child
pornography files, had self-produced images and videos with
sexual abuse of minors, victims who have already been identified
by the Postal Police of Catania who started and conducted the
investigations even undercover, managing to gain the trust of
some of the users who they were then able to identify.
Many of the suspects thought they could 'enjoy the anonymity' of
the web
"There are victims all over the world," Curcio underlined, "and
we will try to identify them to give them the necessary
support".
The director of Italy's Postal and Communications Police
Service, Ivano Gabrielli, said:
"A lot is being done at an international level to fight child
pornography and all the seized material will be shared and
poured into work groups that aim to identify the victims, which
is our goal, the highest ethical one and the one that then leads
to identifying the abused".
"This is a trade that produces billions of euros all over the
world. We must think of this as a criminal phenomenon that
evidently feeds on deviance and individual criminality, but
which also involves the presence of criminal organizations that
organize productions of this type all over the world".
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