Counter Pedophilia Investigate Unit

MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish police said on Monday they had arrested 40 people in raids across the country to break up a file-sharing child pornography network.

The Civil Guard said in a statement that officers had conducted searches in 51 towns, confiscating computers containing 1,350 gigabytes of child pornography, as well as 25,000 photographs and 9,000 videos.

One of those arrested is suspected of distributing and posting pedophile images on the Internet. Another 35 people have been charged with forming part of the network.

The investigation began in February, after a computer user reported that he had accidentally accessed a network sharing pornographic photographs.

This was the biggest operation of its type in Spain since police swooped on 121 suspects in a child pornography raid on October 1.

(Reporting by Elena Massa; Writing by Martin Roberts; Editing by Charles Dick)