Minors among suspects arrested in seizure of 100s of Gigabytes of child pornography

Police say suspects computers contained pornography depicting of full-on sexual relations between adults and young children.

By BEN HARTMAN
Handcuffs (illustrative photo) 370 (photo credit: Reuters)
Handcuffs (illustrative photo) 370
(photo credit: Reuters)
Officers from the National Cyber Crimes Unit of the Israel Police seized hundreds of gigabytes of child pornography on computers belonging to several people arrested on Tuesday in cities across the country.
Among the suspects are two boys, aged 15 and 17, who own computers where some of the material was found.
According to the LAHAV 433 Serious and International Crime Unit – which oversees the cyber unit – officers spent months tracking down the users sharing and in possession of the pornography, which included depictions of full-on sexual relations between adults and young children.
The officers have interrogated 17 suspects so far, as part of a large-scale investigation that included the assistance of a number of foreign police forces.
The suspects include the two minors and five men from the Galilee, the Dan region and the Sharon. The men were ordered kept in custody for five days, while the boys were sent to five days house arrest.
Founded in 2012, the cyber crimes unit is staffed by dozens of officers and focuses on mass cyber attacks on Israeli infrastructure and on child pornography, but also more and more on hackers using their skills to extort money, and the use of the Darknet closed private network to sell and buy drugs.