By Xinhua,
Canberra : At least 90 people will face local courts in Australia after a global child pornography crackdown, Australian Federal Police (AFP) warned on Thursday.
There will be more arrests following the six-month Operation Centurion, which is part of a wider Interpol investigation involving 170 countries, the police said.
So far, 90 people have been arrested or summonsed in Australia, including a federal police officer, a teacher and a sports administrator.
The investigation was triggered after a hacker posted 99 child porn images on a European website, which attracted 12 million hits in just 76 hours, including 2,800 from Australian IP addresses.
Four children dependent on alleged offenders have been removed from their homes, deemed to be in danger, but police could not confirm whether they appeared in any of the seized images or what state they were from.
AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty said 300 search warrants had been executed and more than a million images had been seized.
“Some of the images involve adults as well as children, the children range from babies to 18 years of age,” he told reporters.
“They come from various countries, the real tragedy of this is that we don’t know the origins of a lot of these children,” he added.