Swiss police crack down on child porn ring

The crackdown against cyber crime in Switzerland is the result of international cooperation. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

Police in western Switzerland have detained two suspects and questioned another 96 people in a large-scale operation against child pornography.

The operation was carried out from the beginning of September to the end of October, as the Vaud cantonal police announced on Monday. During 42 house searches, the police officers seized 311 computers, storage media and other means of communication.

Nearly 100 people living in the canton of Vaud who had downloaded or made available child pornography images or videos were questioned as suspects. Of these, more than ten of them were minors.

According to the police, a total of 120 cases were processed. About ten of them involved people living in the city of Lausanne. These cases were forwarded to the city police for further investigation.

Of all the people who were reported to the public prosecutor’s office and the juvenile court, two were remanded in custody. One of them was also charged with sexual abuse of a minor.

Tip-off from US

Swiss officials said the operation to combat cyber-paedophilia could be carried out mainly thanks to the reports from the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States, the headquarters of the main internet providers through which illegal content is channelled. They have developed a procedure to track down this content and report it to the countries concerned.

Switzerland’s federal criminal police receives these reports from the US to analyse and hand on to the cantonal authorities.

The cyber competence centre of the Geneva cantonal police monitors the so-called “peer-to-peer” file-sharing networks and specifically reports illegal content to the cantons of western Switzerland for further investigation.