By Emma Thomasson
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Coordinated police raids across 10 countries have smashed a number of Internet child pornography networks and several people have been arrested, the European Union police agency Europol says.
Police seized computers, laptops, videos and other material containing images of child abuse and several suspects were being investigated, Europol said on Thursday, but declined to give details of how many people had been detained or how many networks were broken.
"It was one of the biggest, most successful operations coordinated by Europol," said Evangelos Stergioulis, spokesman for The Hague-based agency.
Europol said in a statement that more than 40 locations were searched in simultaneous raids, with the main focus of the operation led by police in the central German state of Hesse.
Advertisement starts
Advertisement ends
The other countries involved in what it called operation "Odysseus" were Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Spain, Sweden and Britain. The investigation follows similar ones in 2002 and 2003, Europol said.
"Today’s operation has exposed a complex and organised hierarchical structure that Internet networks of paedophiles and child molesters are using to protect themselves by hiding their identities and their atrocious activities," Europol said.
In Belgium, a major peadophile court case is set to start on Monday with the trial of Marc Dutroux, a self-confessed killer and child rapist, who faces charges of kidnapping and raping six young girls kept in makeshift cells in a basement.
His lawyer intends to depict the 47-year-old as merely a part of a wider paedophile ring.
SEARCHES BUT NO ARRESTS IN GERMANY
German police said on Thursday the homes and offices of 60 people were raided worldwide, including 31 homes and offices in Germany.
Police were able to identify 34 people worldwide who were suspected of belonging to porn user groups.
Siegfried Wilhelm, spokesman for Hesse police, said there had been no arrests so far in Germany.
In addition to the countries Europol said were involved in the raids, German police said suspected porn users were also in France, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, Russia and the United States.
Last year, Germany cracked a child porn network involving some 26,500 Internet users in 166 countries. This month, German police detained some 50 suspects in a probe into a child pornography ring that also involved five other European states.
An Italian children’s rights association said last month that the number of reported paedophilia Web sites rose by 70 percent in 2003 with the United States accounting for more than half, followed by South Korea, Russia, Brazil, Italy and Spain.
Last year, the U.S. government launched "Operation Predator" to protect children from pornographers, Internet predators and human traffickers. Some 1,600 people have been arrested.
