The Spanish Civil Guard arrested a total of 51 people and charged a further 20 on Friday in 27 provinces across the country in a swoop against child pornography and the corruption of minors on the internet. Eight of the arrests took place in Madrid, eight more in Barcelona, six in Valencia, four in Alicante, three in Tarragona and Málaga and two in Baleares, Granada, Guipúzcoa and Sevilla among other provinces.
The case came about after a resident of Córdoba came across some of the material and informed the authorities in March last year. It’s been revealed that a high-ranking police officer in the local force in Zaragoza and a staff psychiatric at a hospital in the city are amongst the 67 people who have been arrested this week in three separate operations relating to distribution of child pornography over the Internet. According to information published in the Aragón newspaper, El Diario de Aragón, the two men were arrested on Tuesday, and both their homes were searched.
The paper said the doctor had some 70,000 files on his computer, while the officer is accused of downloading pornographic images of children. Both are married men with children, they said.
It is unclear if the two suspects are connected with the 13 arrests which took place across the country on Tuesday in ‘Operación Bea.’ The swoop came after months of investigation, and began when a woman who was searching for information about babies on the net came across pornographic images.
Twenty of those arrested have been charged with the crimes of corruption of minors and of possession of child pornography.
Some 200 civil guards took part in simultaneous searches in 73 homes in 28 provinces, and several computers, drives, hard discs, DVD’s and CD’s removed. The total number of images recovered in the operation, code named ‘Fabiola’ is thought to be more than a million.
It follows the arrest in Vitoria on Thursday of another three people who face charges of distributing child pornography in a file share program on the net.