Child pornography online, arrests throughout Italy. In the videos he also abuses babies

Published on: 12/16/2020 9:00 AM

More than 300 men from the Postal Police have been carrying out flagrant searches and arrests since the early hours of the morning in 53 Italian provinces and 18 regions. This is the most massive police operation in recent years against online child pornography. After two years of “undercover” investigations carried out on the Internet, the Milan Postal Police and the CNCPO – National Center for Contrasting Child Pornography Online – of the Rome Postal Police Service, coordinated by Deputy Prosecutors Fusco and Mannella Together with Deputies Barilli and Tarzia from the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, they identified 432 users who, exploiting the potential of WhatsApp and Telegram, participated in “channels” and “groups” intended to share photos and videos of child pornography that show actual sexual violence against minors; the abuses, in particular, affected mainly girls and boys and, in some cases, even babies.

Of the 159 groups identified by the Postal Police investigators, 16 were real criminal associations, within which promoters, organizers and participants could be distinguished, with well-defined roles and tasks. Each group was governed by strict and precise rules of conduct aimed at preserving the anonymity – and therefore “safety” – of the criminal association, as well as of the individual participants. The violation of these rules implied, in fact, the expulsion by the administrators. The long and widespread investigation has made it possible to name the nicknames used in the network by pedophiles, bringing them to light and out of the anonymity of the network.

There are 81 Italians identified by the Milan Postal Police, two of whom, a 71-year-old optician with Neapolitan university collaborations and an unemployed 20-year-old Venetian, were promoting and managing child pornography groups, organizing their activities and recruiting new associates from all the territory. world. In fact, 351 foreign users are involved in the survey, for each of which all useful computer traces have been collected for identification. Among the suspects are people of very heterogeneous social origins and ages, such as established professionals, workers, students, retirees, public and private employees, including a traffic watchman and several unemployed, with ages ranging between 18 and 71 years.

The most affected regions are Lombardy and Campania, where 35% of the suspects reside. The personal, local and computer system searches carried out by the Milan District Prosecutor’s Office led to the seizure of mobile phones, tablets, hard drives, pen drives, computers and email accounts and social profiles. Several accounts were found, used by the suspects to request child pornography material, as well as a large amount of illegal material stored in the seized computer media.