Australian police have smashed a child porn ring, arresting 13 men after hundreds of thousands of images and videos were seized, some depicting infants, they said Friday.
Australian Federal Police raided 19 properties across the country over the past week after a tip off by Interpol, which linked the men to a child exploitation network in Germany.
"These men were allegedly accessing child sexual exploitation material via a peer-to-peer file-sharing network, with images depicting children including infants, being sexually abused," police said in a statement.
Computers, hard drives, laptop computers, portable storage devices and mobile phones allegedly containing hundreds of thousands of child abuse images and videos were seized, they added.
"If child predators think that they can avoid being detected they should think again. The Internet is not immune from law enforcement activity," said the head of the police cybercrime operations Glen McEwen.
Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare called it "a really important breakthrough".
"The work the police are doing to protect our children against predators who seek to harm them is tough and I congratulate them," he said.
According to police, 850 people have been arrested in Australia over the past seven years on charges relating to online child sexual exploitation.
Source: AFP Asian Edition
