Greece ‘soft’ on child porn
Greece is not cracking down hard enough on child porn on the Internet and is believed to be accommodating more than 15,000 victims of human trafficking, an international police seminar in Thessaloniki heard yesterday. Those found guilty of uploading child pornography from Internet sites face relatively minor penalties if they can prove they had not intended to profit from their actions, Attica Police Chief Manolis Sfakianakis said. But he said reforms were being drafted to «remove this condition… and untie police hands.» As for trafficking victims, the real number could be higher than the official figure of 15,000 as women are often unwilling to report those exploiting them, Thessaloniki Police Chief Stergios Apostolidis said. A police anti-trafficking squad has made 151 arrests and charged 16 suspects since 2003.