Five Greek men from Athens, Patras, Theassaloniki and Drama have been charged with being part of an international child pornography ring after allegedly buying computer files with indecent images from an Italian pedophile who was arrested earlier this year.

Six computer hard disks and 49 CDs with indecent images were seized by officers of the electronic crimes squad who conducted the raids in cooperation with Europol as part of an operation that was carried out simultaneously in 20 European countries.

The five suspects allegedly bought pornographic material from the Italian and built up archives of tens of thousands of pictures. Police are investigating whether they sold these images over the Internet.

The Italian, who was not named, allegedly traveled through Eastern Europe and abused children as young as 5 and sold images of the assaults over the Internet. He allegedly charged customers 2,000 euros to watch the live rape of a child.