50 Irish suspects in child porn investigation
The operation, code-named Carole, was led by specialist police in Austria, and uncovered 2,360 suspects in at least 77 countries who accessed a pay-per-view website.
The website contained videos of children, all under the age of 14, being sexually abused.
A Garda spokesman confirmed that 50 suspects had been traced to Ireland as part of the investigation. He said searches had been carried out at homes across the country and that investigations were ongoing.
“Fifty people have been identified in Ireland as having accessed this website. These people are spread throughout the country.”
The spokesman added: “A number of searches have been carried out and these investigations are ongoing. For this reason we are not in a position to comment further on this matter.”
The investigation here is being carried out by the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Unit, which is attached to the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
The desktops, laptops, hard drives, and discs seized in the searches are being examined by the Garda’s Computer Crimes Investigation Unit, which is the force’s specialist section which examines child pornography material.
It is understood that the investigations began when a Vienna-based internet file hosting service approached Austrian authorities after he found child pornographic material during a check.
It has been reported that once the investigation was set up about 8,000 hits from 2,361 separate computer addresses in 77 countries were recorded.
The videos were posted on a Russian website and users had to pay $89 (€71) to access the material.
Reports from Austria said that 272 suspects were identified there. Elsewhere, up to 600 people were identified in the US, 400 in Germany, and 100 in France.
lPeople who come across online child pornography can report it to hotline.ie or contact their local Garda station
