NETHERLANDS: European police bust international child pornography network

Police in Europe uncover and dismantle an international child pornography network that used the internet to sell videos and receive orders for what it called 'tailor-made' videos where the perpetrators facilitated fantasies on demand. They have made arrests across 8 different countries. Police in Europe have dismantled a global child pornography network that produced 'tailor-made' videos for about 2,500 customers in 19 countries European Union prosecution body Eurojust and police agency Europol told a news conference in The Hague on Monday (November 5) they launched their coordinated investigation, dubbed "Operation Koala", after the arrest of an Italian running a website selling videos of underage girls. Police seized thousands of computers, videos and photographs in several hundred house searches. The Italian, identified by prosecutors as 42-year-old Marzola Sergio, was arrested last year after Australian police found a video he was distributing which showed a Belgian man raping his daughters aged nine and Belgian prosecutor Michele Coninsx said Europol wanted to give out a signal that their activity was not only illegal but also "unacceptable and revolting" and that it was their priority to make children safe. She also said that police uncovered what they called 'tailor-made' videos and that users of the pornographic material were putting in orders regarding the kind of fantasies they wished to fulfil. "Character of this case is definitely that we did not only identify people downloading, using those pictures of sexual child abuse, but we also went up in the network towards those disseminating those images and what is even more interesting, to the producers of those - what we call, tailor-made videos and films - and this is unique because here we see that films are being ordered with specifics such as - we want those children on the video, we want to be present, we want them with or without lingerie and we will even bring the kind of lingerie we will want them to wear and this is quite unique. Fortunately for society this is beyond expectation and fantasy, but this is also the real world," Coninsx said. Sergio produced most of his videos in Ukraine, where Europol investigator Menno Hagemeijer said girls were promised modelling careers and paid 20-40 euros for sexually-explicit photo shoots. Police have identified 21 Ukrainian victims so far. Menno Hagemeijer of Europol's serious crime department explained how police uncovered an international network which served as many as 2500 customers. He said that on 12 July 2006 Australian police had "found a video showing the sexual abuse of two young girls by an adult man. The language spoken on the video was Flemish, located as an accent in the Bruges area. So local authorities in Bruges managed to identify one of the girls, this led to the house of the girl and it was found out that the two girls were sisters and the abuser was the father of the girl. The father of the girl had received a few hundred euros to have this video made by an Italian national. This Italian national was running a website on which he sold around 150 video films showing the sexual abuse of children and he made large financial profits, and this individual was arrested. Europol has investigated the clientele of this person and identified around 2500 customers of this website, which we, in this inquiry, are trying to identify and bring to justice," said Menno Hagemeijer. He said these customers included school teachers, swimming instructors, lawyers and IT executives and that police recovered 50,000 emails to and from customers. He said the lingerie the girls were wearing in the pictures was auctioned and customers could request videos in which the children held a sign with their name or wore lingerie they sent in. Some customers attended the shoots in person, others sent the children gifts including jewellery and poetry. Hagemeijer said 23 victims had been identified of different nationalities. "Overall we have identified 23 victims. Besides the two Belgian girls, there were 21 Ukrainian girls that we have identified. They were recruited through newspaper advertisements, or they were picked up in McDonald's, or on the street," said Hagemeijer. European officials said that police had arrested 92 people so far, including 21 in France, 14 in Britain, 11 in Spain, eight in Sweden, five in Belgium, four in Italy, two in Iceland and one in Denmark but said they expect that number to rise significantly as the investigation continues.

ITN Source | November 6, 2007

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