International
police group Interpol said Thursday that nine people had been arrested in
Thailand, Australia and the US and 50 children had been rescued after
investigators took down an online paedophilia ring.
More
arrests were expected as police in nearly 60 countries pursue investigations
stemming from an Interpol operation launched two years ago into a hidden
"dark web" site with 63,000 users worldwide.
Fifty
children were rescued following the arrests. Police are trying to identify an
additional 100 in images that had been shared on the internet's uncharted
corners.
Interpol
said its Operation Blackwrist began after it found material that was traced
back to a subscription-based site on the dark web, where people can use
encrypted software to hide behind layers of secrecy.
Dark
web sites can't be found through search engines, and users need to have the
specific URL address to land on a site.
Interpol
enlisted help from national agencies worldwide, with the US Homeland Security
Investigations (HSI) department eventually tracking the site's IP address,
where new photos and videos were posted weekly.
The
first arrests came in early 2018, when the site's main administrator, Montri
Salangam, was detained in Thailand, and another administrator, Ruecha Tokputza,
was captured in Australia.
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'Child's worst nightmare' -
Salangam,
whose victims included one of his nephews, was sentenced in June last year to
146 years in prison by Thai courts, while an associate, a pre-school teacher,
got 36 years.
Tokputza
was handed a 40-year prison term at his trial in Australia last Friday, the
longest ever for child sex offences in the country.
The
Australian Associated Press reported that Tokputza, 31, pleaded guilty to 50
counts of abuse of 11 babies and children -- one just 15 months old -- between
2011 and 2018.
"You
are a child's worst nightmare, you are every parent's horror, you are a menace
to the community," Judge Liesl Chapman said in Adelaide.
Interpol
did not identify the others arrested.
The
HSI's regional attache in Bangkok, Eric McLoughlin, said in the statement that
"numerous arrests" had been made in the US. Some held "positions
of public trust," he said, and one individual was abusing his two-year-old
stepbrother.
"Operation
Blackwrist sends a clear message to those abusing children, producing child
sexual exploitation material and sharing the images online: We see you, and you
will be brought to justice," Interpol's Secretary General Juergen Stock
said.
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