German police bust darknet child porn network 'with 400,000 members'
German police said Monday they had shut down "one of the biggest darknet child pornography platforms in the world" and arrested four of its members in a series of raids in mid-April.
The platform, named as "Boystown", had existed
since 2019, counted over 400,000 members and was "set up for the worldwide
exchange of child pornography", federal police said in a statement.
The darknet forum allowed users to communicate with others
and share graphic image and video content which included "serious sexual
abuse of toddlers", the statement said.
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's Concepcion region, also a German
citizen, is to be extradited back to Germany on the basis of an international
arrest warrant issued by a court in Frankfurt.
Three of the men are accused of having managed the platform
as administrators, providing technical support and advice to members on how to
avoid being discovered by the authorities, while another was "one of the
platform's most active users", police said.
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.
Both "Boystown" and other chat platforms were
taken offline following the raids.
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