Germany busts darknet child porn network
Print Edition
German police said yesterday they had shut down 鈥渙ne of the biggest darknet child pornography platforms in the world鈥 and arrested four of its members in a series of raids in mid-April.
The platform, named as 鈥淏oystown,鈥 had existed since 2019, counted over 400,000 members and was 鈥渟et up for the worldwide exchange of child pornography, in particular images of the abuse of boys,鈥 federal police said in a statement.
The darknet forum allowed users to communicate with others and share graphic image and video content which included 鈥渟erious sexual abuse of toddlers.鈥
Three men between the ages of 40 and 64 were arrested in seven raids in Germany, while a further suspect was detained in Paraguay on the request of German authorities.
The suspect in Paraguay鈥檚 Concepcion region, also a German citizen, is to be extradited to Germany.
The three main suspects, aged 40, 49 and 58, are accused of managing the platform as administrators, providing technical support and advice to members on how to avoid being discovered by the authorities.
A further suspect, a 64-year-old man from Hamburg, was 鈥渙ne of the platform鈥檚 most active users,鈥 having posted more than 3,500 times since signing up.
鈥淭his sends a clear message: if you commit offences against the weakest, you will not be safe anywhere,鈥 said Germany's Interior Minister Horst Seehofer in a statement.
鈥淲e are bringing the perpetrators to account and doing everything humanly possible to protect children from such repugnant crimes.鈥
Investigators added that the months-long, German-instigated operation had been coordinated by Europol and supported by law enforcement in the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States and Canada.
Led by federal police and state prosecutors in Frankfurt, a total of seven raids were carried out in the German regions of North-Rhine Westphalia and Bavaria and the city of Hamburg.
鈥淏oystown鈥 and other chat platforms were taken offline following the raids.
The justice minister for the state of Hesse, Eva Kuehne-Hoermann, hailed what she said was 鈥渁 fantastic success in the fight against sexual violence against children.鈥
鈥淭he investigators have shown once again that law enforcement works in the darknet and that criminals cannot feel safe there.鈥
Darknet sites are invisible to most internet users and can only be accessed by using encryption technology.
They have repeatedly been used by criminals to trade drugs, weapons and child pornography.
In 2019, a court in Hesse convicted four men of founding and running a darknet child pornography forum. The forum, which had about 110,000 members, ran for around six months before being discovered and shut down in police raids in June 2017.
The defendants were convicted of possessing and publishing child pornography and were jailed for up to nine years and nine months.
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