Thought Leadership
Several hundred thousand users worldwide, millions of images on one computer alone: investigators have shut down a huge abuse platform with images and videos on the Darknet and taken six suspects from Germany into custody.
The investigation into current and future suspects continued: there are possible users and cross-connections on all continents of the world. For investigative reasons, the investigator was very reluctant to say how the police had tracked down the suspects. He did not even want to mention the name of the platform that had been shut down.
Raids in six federal states
Searches were carried out in six federal states in September – for example in Minden and Jüchen in North Rhine-Westphalia. The investigators had seized extensive evidence, some of it from running computers. A total of 1,517 pieces of evidence such as laptops and cell phones were found. The seized DVDs and video cassettes alone filled 94 moving boxes. The exact amount of data cannot yet be estimated – just like the number of victims, said Gailer.
According to NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU), 13.5 terabytes of data can be analyzed on the computer of a single defendant alone – the equivalent of around 3.4 million photos.
Up to 15 years imprisonment
According to Reul, the darknet platform, which has now been shut down, had been in operation since 2019. This makes it one of the longest-running illegal platforms for the exchange of heinous images, said the minister. The suspects face prison sentences of between 2 and 15 years, according to Markus Hartmann, head of the Central and Contact Point Cybercrime NRW (ZAC). The success of the investigation is a “bombshell”, emphasized NRW Justice Minister Benjamin Limbach (Greens). This shows the perpetrators: “You can’t hide.”
NRW Minister President Hendrik Wüst praised the “outstanding success of the investigation”. “Our authorities will do everything they can to track down further suspects & consistently prevent abuse,” promised the CDU politician on X.
Investigator Gailer described the processes: No money had flowed into the platform, but the participants, who often had many years of experience in the scene, had exchanged huge amounts of data, also in order to gain so-called reputation points with other users and to build up their position and status in the group.
Refusals were not accepted
Gailer said that he had never felt any understanding for the destruction of children’s souls through abuse when watching the countless videos. The young children were talked about in a disturbing way as “pure sex objects”.
Refusals were not accepted. “Children were made compliant through gifts and persuasion. Discussions were held about which alcoholic beverages, which narcotics and which drugs would make the children weak-willed,” said Gailer.
Other backers abroad
The men now in custody are considered to be leading organizers of the German branch of the darknet platform. The suspects are two 45 and 56-year-old men from North Rhine-Westphalia, a 43-year-old man from Schleswig-Holstein, a 61-year-old man from Baden-Württemberg, a 62-year-old man from Lower Saxony, a 69-year-old man from Rhineland-Palatinate and a 45-year-old man from Bavaria, it was reported. Presumably about the same number of executives from the platform had operated abroad.
Appeal to the perpetrators: get help, show remorse
The raid had caused considerable unrest in the scene and made it difficult for the perpetrators, said Minister Limbach. He suspected that many of them were also watching the press conference streamed on the internet, said chief investigator Gailer and then addressed the perpetrators directly via camera: there was still a chance to get help and show remorse, he said. “If so, then now.” If the police are at the door, it will be too late.
The search success is only a limited reason to celebrate due to the huge number of unreported cases, emphasized ZAC boss Hartmann. His agency has conducted more than 25,000 investigations since it was founded in 2020. “We are working at full capacity.”
“Know more quickly who is sitting where behind the computer”
In order to track down perpetrators of child abuse or anti-terror investigations in good time, Reul once again called for the retention of telecommunications data. “The darknet must never become a comfort zone for criminals. No criminal should feel safe there either,” he said. “We have to get hold of these people’s IP addresses. I’ve been preaching that since I became a minister. We need to know more quickly who is sitting where behind the computer.”
Data retention, in which telecommunications data is stored for a certain period of time without cause, has been politically controversial for years. “We have to consider what is more important to us: the protection of data or human lives. I am in favor of the latter,” argued Reul.
The German Police Union (GdP) also called for more technical support for investigators. Not only in the current case, investigators are “confronted with an unbelievable amount of images and videos that can only be handled with artificial intelligence”, said GdP board member Ernst Herget. “Considerable investment is needed here, which we have not yet seen in the NRW budget.”
dpa
