Austria smashes global child porn operation

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria has smashed a child pornography ring involving 2,361 suspects in 77 countries who paid for Internet videos showing children subjected to "the worst kind of sexual abuse."

Officials said on Wednesday 607 of the suspects were in the United States, 466 in Germany, 114 in France and 23 in Austria. Hits on a Russian Web page that offered the videos were also recorded in Algeria, Iceland and Venezuela.

Most of those under investigation were suspected of distributing the digital videos after watching them, Interior Minister Guenther Platter told a news conference.

Gremel said investigators believed the videos were produced in eastern Europe and uploaded to the site from Britain.

Eight videos downloaded from the Internet site, which has been shut down by investigators, displayed "the worst kind of sexual abuse of children," Platter said. The youngest violated girl was 5 years old.

Platter said 14 of the 23 Austrian suspects had confessed to downloading the material. They included students, government employees and retired people, and ranged in age from 17 to 69.

None of the suspects had been arrested but Austrian police were pooling findings with law-enforcement counterparts in other countries in the hope of bringing about prosecutions.

In July, the operator of a Vienna-based Internet firm alerted police that hackers had uploaded suspicious material on to its server, said Harald Gremel, an Austrian police expert on Internet crime overseeing the investigation.

In a 24-hour period, police recorded more than 8,000 hits on the Russian Web site from 2,361 computer addresses.

VIDEOS COME FROM EASTERN EUROPE

Investigations to learn the fate of children abused in the videos and catch those who molested them are continuing.

The Danish news agency Ritzau said 19 Danes were caught up in the investigation, citing police sources.

An official with the U.S. Justice Department said it was supporting Austrian authorities in the case which underlined strong cross-border cooperation to combat online child pornography.

Another investigator, Erich Zwettler, said the overall volume of child pornography on the Internet had remained steady of late although an increase in material coming from Asia, mainly Vietnam, Sri Lanka and North Korea, was noticeable.

Gremel said investigators made test-purchases of child porn videos on one Web site that cost $89 (69 euros) each. "In three days, this site earned around $350,000 and there are thousands of sites like that," he said.

Possession of pornography involving children under 14 years old can result in a prison term of up to two years in Austria. Production and distribution of child pornography is punishable by to 10 years in prison.

The latest Austrian Justice Ministry figures show 125 adults were convicted of handling child pornography in the country in 2005, compared with 73 convicted in 2004.

In May 2006, police in 12 European Union countries and the United States searched more than 150 houses and arrested several people suspected of being involved in child pornography.

That swoop was prompted by Dutch intelligence about an Internet message board. The network used sophisticated techniques to hide members' electronic identities and to post encrypted content for a short period on free Web services.