55 men arrested in France – Liberation

They are fifty-five men to have been arrested in France between Monday May 20 and this Thursday, May 22 in the morning, as part of a vast operation to dismantle a pedocrime network. They acted via The encrypted Telegram messagingexplained this Thursday, May 22, the Office of Minors (Hormins), after ten months of investigation.

The accused, aged 25 to 75, including a priest, a grandfather, an ambulance, « Good family fathers »a music teacher or singles, exchanged on Telegram messaging and were linked to pedocriminals « Extremely dangerous »incarcerated since last summer, said Commissioner Quentin Bevan, head of the Operational Pole of Ofmin.

The arrests took place in 42 departments, at least for detention, distribution and usual consultation of child pornographic content concerning children of « Under 10 years ». Forty-two parquets are concerned, the file having not been centralized at this stage.

This vast operation had the arrest as a starting point, last summer by the police officers, of pedocriminals who abused children and put online their misdeeds on Telegram.

“Behind these proven abusers of children, it took ten months of investigation to reach this net. Ten months of infiltration, thousands of exchanges, analysis and detection of pedos images by a task force mounted with ofmin « continued the commissioner.

For Quentin Bevan, « Telegram always remains the privileged platform of pedocriminals ». If he recognizes progress in the cooperation of the platform with the investigators since the arrest last August at the bourget of his boss, Pavel Durov, he considers that Telegram fills « Barely the minimum of its legal obligations » in this area.