Associated Incidents
At least 25 individuals have been arrested in one of the first international operations of its kind, Europol said on Friday. The main accused is a resident of Denmark.
Contacted by the Swiss News Agency Keystone-ATS, the Federal Office of Police (fedpol) said the cantonal police in Basel Country and Lucerne police and the Zurich municipal police had each arrested a suspected buyer and remanded him in custody. Criminal proceedings are being conducted by the respective public prosecutor's offices.
The majority of the arrests were made on Wednesday in a worldwide operation led by the Danish police and also involving law enforcement agencies from 18 other countries, including Switzerland.
The crackdown follows the arrest in November of the main suspect in the case, a Danish national who ran an online platform on which he distributed the AI-generated content he produced.
Growing volume
The main defendant offered the banned child pornography content on popular social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, X and Discord. Buyers obtained access to hundreds of images of abused children by paying a single-digit sum each month, fedpol said.
"The online sexual exploitation of children remains one of the most threatening manifestations of cybercrime in the European Union," Europol said.
It "continues to be one of the main priorities for law enforcement agencies, who have to deal with an ever-increasing volume of illegal content", the agency added.
Translated from French by DeepL/ts