Italian police led Operation Icebreaker, which descended on Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Sweden.
Europol, the pan-European polic agency, supported the combined police effort that netted computers containing information about the sharing of pictures of molested children on the Internet.
"I find it of the utmost importance to focus on this extremely terrible kind of crime,” Europol's director Max-Peter Ratzel said. “So it is my hope that today's operation will lead the investigators to some of the producers behind these evil deeds."
An unrelated investigation in Moscow resulted in the arrest of the leader of an international child porn ring. The FBI worked with Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs to bring a 23-year-old Moscow man into custody.
Coordinated child porn crackdowns have been launched throughout Europe for the past few years. Some investigations have been so fruitful that they are overwhelming the caseloads of police forces.
Of late the strikes have been the result of increased cooperation with international agencies such as the FBI and Europol, which collaborate on and share information from common databases.
