The operation "against child pornography on the Internet," was coordinated by
Interpol and began in September after German police tipped off their Spanish
counterparts of several child pornography Internet forums being accessed by
individuals in Spain, it said.
The ministry said police had unearthed 89 hard discs and impounded 16 laptop
computers along with a stash of other material, including 1,224 DVDs and CDs
with the hard drives containing 48 million photographs and video images.
Police said some of those arrested in the latest swoops were well-regarded
members of their community, including lawyers, architects, teachers and
doctors.
One was said to be a care worker in a centre for the disabled.
According to investigators, one person arrested in the latest crackdown had
downloaded hundreds of images of child pornography stored on 21 hard discs in
what the ministry termed the largest haul found to date on a single person in
Spain.
In a sting last year, a priest was among 33 people detained on suspicion of
using their credit cards to buy images of children being abused from websites
based in the United States and Belarus.
Spain has recently stepped up the fight against paedophilia and more than 300
specialist police were involved in the latest swoop, dubbed Operation Penalty.
The operation was coordinated by Interpol, which in 2001 set up a hi-tech Child
Abuse Image Database (ICAID).
ICAID contains hundreds of thousands of images of sexual abuse of children
submitted by Interpol member states to facilitate victim identification by law
enforcement agencies around the globe.
The arrests covered 40 of Spain's 57 regions and involved more than 5,000
downloads of material from German-based servers.
In all, the current police operation has investigated 85 suspects, most of whom
are already in custody.
AFP
