Spain police smash global pedophile ring, many people arrested

Spanish Police took several people into custody, busting a global pedophile ring. According to reports, about 17 people were arrested, mostly teenage boys on the charges of circulating pornographic pictures of children on online messaging platform Whatsapp. In addition to this, it was said that the probe went on for a period of two years and was spread across three continents. According to reports, 33 people were arrested in 11 countries.

The Chemosh operation

It is said that other than the 17 people arrested by the Spanish Police, nine more people are being interrogated with a total strength of 14 teenage boys. According to reports, arrests have been made because they were in possession of pornographic pictures alongside committing the offence of sharing these pictures. The Spanish Police said that they got the information about the WhatsApp group through emails, adding that the group was made by minors who were in their teens. The police also said that many members of the group were okay with the existence of child pornography and the sexual abuse of other minors.

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According to reports, some of the pictures were graphic in nature as they showed sexual abuse and rape of children as young a few months and 11-12 years old. The accused created digital stickers that were really small in size, similar to that of emojis. These stickers showed young children being sexually abused. The Chemosh operation was conducted by the Spanish Central Cybercrime Unit of the country's national police with assistance from EUROPOL, Interpol alongside police from Syria, Pakistan, Italy, India, France, Guatemala, the United Kingdom, Peru, Ecuador and Costa Rica.

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Crackdown on global pedophile ring

According to reports, police force from different countries joined hands to put a stop to a global paedophile ring in approximately 38 countries wherein the accused were found to be uploading videos to websites in the dark web. More than 2,00,000 videos that were stored on a server in South Korea and made accessible through a website, Welcome to video, was sold to paedophiles with payments being made in the form of bitcoins. The website was discovered by United Kingdom's National Crime Agency while it was looking into the case of a paedophile, Matthew Falder, who is serving a 25-year jail sentence for 137 offences in relation to sexual abuse of children.

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(With inputs from agencies)