Police destroy child porn ring
A website offering more than 25,000 photographs of children and adults in obscene positions or engaging in sex acts was allegedly set up by two men in the central city of Volos. One of the two, a 48-year-old from the village of Portaria, was arrested on Tuesday and the second was being sought, police said yesterday. Neither man was identified. This was the 11th children’s porn racket broken up by the police’s Juvenile Protection Sub-Directorate in Greece this year. Overall, 27 people have been arrested for allegedly distributing child pornography. Four of them face stiffer charges for not only distributing photographs that were already on the Internet but for finding, photographing and abusing children. In the latest case, the two suspects allegedly created the website on August 3, 2001. It had 4,273 registered members, who, for a subscription, could see new material on a monthly or daily basis. The site also hosted advertisements inviting mostly juveniles to respond to sexual invitations. The site had attracted visits by some 600,000 people. Aside from the photographs of children, the site also allegedly offered photographs of adults who had been photographed without knowing it with the use of secret cameras and telephoto lenses. Members of the juvenile protection squad said that specially trained officers are using sophisticated computers to track down the people who build websites that offer child pornography. The officers roam the Internet daily, on the lookout for such activity. But this gets more difficult each day as culprits use complicated codes and advanced technology in an effort to stay one step ahead of the police.
