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Australian police arrested 44 men and rescued 16 children from across the country as part of a year-long national investigation into child abuse.
The arrests of all the suspects, aged 19 to 57, were made in all Australian states except the Northern Territory.
The defendants face a total of 350 counts including possession of child exploitation material, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said.
The detainees allegedly used a cloud storage platform to share the abuse, which the AFP described as “the most abominable produced”.
Eleven suspects were arrested in Queensland, eight in New South Wales, 11 in Victoria, nine in South Australia, two in Tasmania, one in the Australian Capital Territory and two in Western Australia.
They worked in a variety of industries, including construction, transportation, law enforcement, and hospitality.
Some of the alleged criminals, who are also accused of producing their own child abuse material online, were allegedly in possession of material produced by a man arrested by AFP in 2015 in the framework of Operation Niro, which resulted in the dismantling of an organized international organization. pedophile union.
Sixteen children were “rescued” in the latest Operation Molto offensive, an ongoing investigation involving hundreds of police and specialists across Australia.
The suspects allegedly used a cloud storage platform to share the abuse. Photo: Australian Federal Police
AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw said identifying the victims was “a race against time.”
“Pixel by pixel, our investigators painstakingly search for clues and never give up, and the tools they use give Australian police access to world leading expertise,” he said.
“Seeing, distributing or producing material for child exploitation is a crime. Children are not merchandise and AFP and its associated agencies work around the clock to identify and prosecute offenders.”
A total of 134 children have been rescued between July 2019 and June 2020, AFP said, including 67 internationally, as a result of its investigations.
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