gelatik
20.05.02, 18:06
More than 30 people suspected of buying paedophile pornography on the web have
been arrested in raids across the UK.
Officers from 30 forces searched about 50 houses and flats across Britain.
Operation Ore targeted computer users suspected of accessing US-based websites
which sell images of children aged as young as five being sexually abused.
US authorities gave the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) details
of the sites' subscribers between May 1999 and the summer of 2001.
The NCIS' Serious Sex Offenders Unit identified a "significant number" of
suspects, and Monday's operation was co-ordinated by the National Crime Squad.
Those arrested include three men - aged 62, 54 and 35 - being held in
Merseyside, a 32-year-old man arrested in Scunthorpe and another, 64, arrested
in Grimsby, North Lincolnshire,
Another man, aged 30, was arrested at an address in Normanton, near Wakefield,
West Yorkshire where two computers were seized for forensic examinations.
Computer equipment was also seized from an address near Rossendale, Lancashire,
where a man, 42, was arrested.
In Cwmbran, south Wales, a man in his mid-fifties was arrested and another
person released on bail, another man, 28, was arrested in Farnham, Surrey.
Police in south west Surrey also arrested a man at his home in Godalming.
A man, 44, from the Sandbach, Cheshire has also been released on police bail
pending further inquiries.
