81 nabbed in operation against child porn in Spain

Madrid: Police have arrested 81 men in Spain over the past few months for sharing paedophilic files on the Internet, in what is seen as the most sweeping operation against pornography this year.

The operation was intended to uproot such activities, even when they were limited to viewing photos and videos on the Web, EFE reported on Saturday.

The arrests were carried out thanks to a computer programme acquired by National Police that minutely combed through the Web for several weeks in November last year looking for computers storing 25 or more child porn files, and the arrests were carried out over six months - from May to October - in 28 Spanish provinces.

The suspected pederasts shared a stream of videos and photos of abused minors, some with content that police called brutal and sadistic like the ones of shackled 1-year-old babies, over a system known as Peer to Peer (P2P), very popular for downloading movies from programs like eMule.

This tool, as an official of the Office of the Technological Investigation Unit in charge of the case told EFE, is so easy to manage that anyone with basic computer skills can do it.

"There are all kinds of child porn addicts: married with children, bachelors, minors... in pederasty there is no fixed profile, they're at all socio-economic levels, in fact one could be your neighbour. If you were to tell the neighbours of those under arrest what they did, they wouldn't believe it," said the investigator, who has been working for seven years trying to stop crimes against minors on the Internet.

"We have seen real dramas in some homes - mothers with children worried about whether her husband did something terrible to the kids," the official said, adding that as yet there are no indications that those under arrest abused minors.

The images circulating on the Internet are generally of children in countries where there is little or no control over such activities, particularly in South America, South-East Asian countries like Thailand and Cambodia where sex tourism abounds, and in Russia.

The cases of those in custody are being handled by some 70 courts around the country, and some of the defendants are already waiting to be sentenced.