SPAIN:Sixty-six people have been arrested in one of the biggest child pornography operations Spain has ever seen. Police seized 48 million photographic images and videos after searching 58 houses and apartments across the country. Television footage released by the police yesterday showed them carrying away dozens of boxes of documents, videos, photographs and computer equipment after their searches.
A police spokeswoman said: "One of those arrested had a store of images on 21 external hard discs, making it the largest quantity of child pornography ever found in the possession of a single person in Spain."
She confirmed that the detainees came from all professions and all walks of life, and many of them were in work which involved contact with children.
Among them are a teacher, a psychologist, a doctor, a school caretaker and a gym instructor, but they also include a barrister, an architect and a security guard.
Members of the national police special technical information brigade are now studying the millions of images to ascertain whether there is any evidence of sexual abuse of children by any of those under arrest.
The operation, codenamed "Operation Penalty", is the result of a tip-off from German police who warned that child pornography websites were being accessed by Spanish internet users.
Detectives, working with the co-operation of Interpol and police forces from other European countries, uncovered more than 5,000 downloads from many thousands of websites. They located 85 separate users, of whom 66 have so far been identified and arrested.
"Operation Penalty" is the result of more than nine months of investigation, although the first arrests only took place two weeks ago. The operation is still continuing, and police do not discount further arrests.
Although this is by far the largest child pornography operation ever uncovered in Spain, it is by no means the only one.
Last month 13 men were arrested, and a further nine are still being investigated in different parts of Spain, after the Civil Guard broke up a ring that was distributing child pornography photographs over the internet.
The police found thousands of nude photographs and hundreds of video tapes of young girls. The main hub of the operation is believed to have been in Almeria in southern Spain.
And one week ago, the deputy director for industry of the Catalan government was arrested as he returned from an official visit abroad. Police had previously found dozens of child pornography images on his office computer.