Germany has dismantled a major network of child pornography on the "darknet", presented as one "of the largest in the world", and arrested four suspects, including the suspected animators of the platform, announced Monday the judicial police.

The dismantling of the "BOYSTOWN" platform and two affiliated couriers, which had existed since 2019, came after a series of searches carried out in mid-April in three German regions, the police said in a statement.

"More than 400,000 members"

The network then had "more than 400,000 members," she added.

“The platform had an international reach and was used for the exchange of pornography relating to minors”, mainly photos or videos of abuse perpetrated on young boys.

Among them were “images of serious sexual abuse of very young children”.

Three Germans were arrested on national territory on an arrest warrant from the Frankfurt court, after a several-month investigation by a special unit of the German police, under the coordination of Europol and with the collaboration of the police Dutch, Swedish, Australian, American and Canadian.

A fourth German, who lives in Paraguay, was arrested on the spot and is the subject of an international arrest warrant on the basis of which he should be delivered to the German authorities.

The police did not reveal their identity.

"Fantastic success" of the operation to fight against sexual violence

Three of the suspects, aged 40, 49 and 58, respectively, are suspected of "having been the administrators of the child pornography platform".

In addition to taking care of network management, they were responsible for "monitoring customers," said the police.

The oldest of them, originally from northern Germany, has lived in South America for many years.

They are suspected of having taken care of the technical implementation of the platform on the darknet and the maintenance of the server.

They also reportedly sent members of the platform security instructions aimed at minimizing the risk of being discovered by the authorities.

The fourth, a 64-year-old man, is suspected of having been one of the most active users of the platform and of having posted more than 3,500 messages.

Eva Kühne-Hörmann, Minister of Justice for the region of Hesse where Frankfurt is located, described the operation as "a fantastic success in the fight against sexual violence against minors".

Several child pornography networks on the darknet dismantled

The darknet is an anonymized space on the internet, not referenced by search engines.

It is regularly used to harbor the criminal trafficking of drugs, weapons or child pornography.

Germany has dismantled several of these networks in recent years.

In March 2019, four Germans accused of having managed such a platform called “Elysium” were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three years and ten months to nine years and nine months.

Active for six months and closed in June 2017 by the German authorities, the site had more than 111,000 members worldwide and allowed them to exchange photos and videos of children.

And in September 2019, the German police arrested seven people suspected of having administered a darknet platform hosted on servers hidden in a former NATO bunker, where child pornography, drugs and data were being trafficked. stolen.

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  • Germany

  • Investigation

  • Child pornography

  • Pedocriminality

  • Society