European police dismantle online child abuse image network
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Polish police announced Wednesday the dismantling of a vast online network for images of child sexual abuse, an operation carried out in cooperation with 11 other European countries.
The operation -- codenamed FEVER -- led to the arrest of 166 people across Europe, including 98 in Poland.
"Among those arrested were people who produced photographs and videos showing the sexual exploitation of minors, ran online forums where they exchanged the material, and pushed minors to have suicidal thoughts," said the Polish police cybercrime office.
"The perpetrators also included the victims' relatives and confidants."
The vast operation was conducted with the backing of the EU's law enforcement agency Europol, the US Joint Counterterrorism Assessment Team (JCAT) alongside authorities from Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Romania and Spain among others, Polish police said.
Of the 166 people arrested, 111 were remanded in custody, 48 of them in Poland, police said.
In Poland, some 600 police officers carried out 159 searches and seized a total of more than 1,700 devices and data media, including computers, hard drives, telephones and SIM cards.
More than 520,000 video files and child sexual abuse images were seized during the operation.
Polish police said the investigation was linked to another major operation, led by German police, that targeted "KidFlix" -- one of the largest child abuse images platform in the world, law enforcement said.
Investigators said last week they had made 79 arrests in connection with the "KidFlix" platform, protecting 39 children throughout their investigation.