Fifty -five men, including a priest, a paramedic and a music teacher, were arrested in France this week as part of an operation to dismantle an alleged pedophile ring that operate through the Telegram messaging application, the authorities said on Thursday.
The arrests took place in 42 departments for possession, distribution and regular visualization of pornography that involve children “under 10 years of age”, to the Ofmin of France, which has the task of preventing violence against minors, A said. AFP.
Ofmin issued the order that led to the arrest of the founder of Telegram Pavel Durov in Paris in 2024, and remains under formal investigation by the French authorities on illegal content in the popular service.
The arrests of the 55 men aged 25 to 75, who followed a 10 -month investigation, took place from Monday to Thursday.
The men exchanged messages on Telegram and were in contact with “extremely dangerous” children’s abusers who have been in prison since last summer, said Quentin Bevan, head of the Min Operating Unit. AFP.
The large -scale operation began last summer with the arrest of suspected individuals to abuse children and publish images on Telegram. The suspects are being investigated for human trafficking and face life imprisonment.
“He took 10 months of investigation to locate these children’s abusers,” said Bevan. “Ten months of undercover work that involves thousands of exchanges, analysis and detection of pedophile images by a working group established in the OFIN.”
The suspects have children or grandchildren, or come into contact with children at work. Some of the suspects boasted to abuse the children while they slept, but now they claim that they did not commit any crime, according to the investigators.
‘Pedophiles Den’
In a separate case, Durov has been accused of several positions of not stopping the extremist content.
Researchers have faced it with specific cases that range from child abuse to drug trade, scams, weapons sales and hiring success.
Since then, the businessman born in Russia has announced steps that appear to lean to the demands of Paris.
While Bevan recognized the progress in Telegram cooperation with researchers from the Arresto de Durov, said the platform “barely fulfilled its legal obligations.”
He said the telegram is still a “pedophile den” and a “choice platform” for children’s abusers.
Telegram rejected the accusation in a statement on Thursday, saying that “it complies and exceeds its legal obligations to combat harmful content.”
The messaging platform “has always complied with the EU law” and “constantly responded to all binding legal requests for years,” the company added.
Durov says that Telegram has also tried to fight child abuse for years.
In June 2024, France closed the Coco Adult Website, which was used to commit numerous sexual crimes, such as sexual abuse and child violation.
After that, it is believed that some perpetrators of child sexual abuse have changed to telegram, according to a researcher.
