A policeman was one of nine people that has been arrested as part of a large operation to crack down on child pornography in Greece that led to the confiscation of some 900 hours of video footage and 100,000 indecent photographs, officers revealed yesterday.

Police in Greece took part in an international campaign which led to similar operations in a total of 76 countries following a tip-off from authorities in Brazil, where the material, which included images of toddlers and children up to the age of 8 being forced to have sex with children and in some cases animals, was allegedly filmed.

Greek officers said that they arrested the nine suspects, including salaried employees and self-employed professionals, during the previous three days in Athens, Thessaloniki, Agrinion and Iraklion. Among them was a 42-year-old officer from a police station in the Halastra area of Thessaloniki.

They all stand accused of viewing and exchanging child pornography, which carries a jail sentence of up to five years.

Police seized some 30,000 gigabytes of information from the computer hard drives of the suspects. The material was being shared by pedophiles in this country and abroad over the Internet, according to police.

Officers said they are also building cases against another 11 suspects.

This was the latest crackdown on child pornography in Greece and came on the back of another international operation, dubbed “Carousel”, in May of this year, that led to the arrest of 13 people in various parts of the country.