Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Police bust child porn ring using mobile phones

Investigators in Germany have for the first time uncovered a paedophilia network distributing images via mobile phones as police this week raided more than 400 homes across the country.

Published: 24 January 2009 08:57 CET
Police bust child porn ring using mobile phones
Photo: DPA

Public prosecutors in Kassel, western Germany, said on Friday that police had seized thousands of telephones, computers, hard drives,USB sticks, DVDs and CDs in raids across the country.

“This is not the biggest case in German history but it has an extraordinary dimension,” the public prosecutor’s office in Kassel said in a statement. It added that it was the first time police in Germany had found mobile phones being used to distribute pornographic pictures via MMS multimedia messaging technology on such a large scale.

The search, codenamed “Operation Susi,” was launched after investigations against a 33-year-old man near Kassel found his mobile phone contained the numbers of more than 400 men and some women to whom he had sent as well as received pornographic images from.

Most of the suspects, whose ages range between 20 and 83, are said to be from the state of North-Rhine Westphalia while 76 are from Bavaria. The more than 400 raids carried out this week across Germany have still not led to any arrests.

“We still don’t know how the suspects communicated with each other and whether there is a mastermind behind the network,” said Klaus Quanz, head of the police operation near Kassel in the state of Hesse.

Prosecutors have said the investigations are proving to be extremely difficult because the courts needed to examine each search warrant individually.

Public Prosecutor Hans-Manfred Jung said most of the suspects were being investigated for the possession of child pornography, a charge which carries a prison sentence of up to two years.

“We’re now looking for indications of actual abuse. Legally, that would then put the whole affair in a totally different league,” he said.

CRIME

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

German authorities said Friday they had arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who allegedly planned an Islamist attack on army soldiers using two machetes in Bavaria.

Published: 13 September 2024 11:17 CEST
Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

SHOW COMMENTS