Johannesburg - A Joburg university student is the latest person to be arrested in a worldwide police crackdown on child pornography.
He appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday and was released on R5 000 bail. His case was postponed to December 4.
He is the tenth South African to have been arrested in an international child pornography investigation known as Operation Cloud Nine run by Belgian and South African detectives, which has netted more than 40 suspects so far.
“These (paedophilia) rings have software that enables them to share images of child pornography with each other,” national police spokesman Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo told The Star on Thursday morning.
“The 20-year-old suspect, who is a computer science student, was identified through the account of another suspect who was arrested in Plettenberg Bay early this year,” Naidoo said.
The government has set up a committee to discover just how widespread the problem of child pornography is in South Africa.
Earlier this month, a 47-year-old man was arrested in Fish Hoek.
The man was believed to have had thousands of images of child pornography with some showing the “violent abuse” of babies as young as a few days old.
He was charged with the possession and distribution of pornography.
South African and Belgian officials had been monitoring the Fish Hoek man since June.
Five other South Africans from around the country including Midrand, Port Elizabeth, Plettenberg Bay, Pennington and Scottburgh have also been arrested during Operation Cloud Nine.
“All of these suspects’ alleged shenanigans were brought to the attention of the SAPS after police authorities in Antwerp, Belgium, arrested one of their residents for the production, possession and facilitation of child pornographic images that depict minors or where minors are being used for these purposes,” Naidoo said.
In March, a Port Elizabeth couple was arrested for the possession and distribution of child pornography.
A 39-year-old Midrand man was arrested on the same charges.
Also in March, a 53-year-old man from Grahamstown was arrested for the possession, manufacture and distribution of pictures of over 600 children and in January, a 37-year-old computer engineer from Plettenberg Bay was arrested after Belgian police profiled him as a paedophile on a social media website.
Social worker and president of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, Joan van Niekerk, said it was difficult to know how widespread child pornography was in the country.
“This is because access to child pornography is often done very secretly and in the privacy of someone’s home, so it’s difficult to gauge the full extent of this problem.”
Despite Naidoo’s concern that it was evident this crime had no boundaries, he issued a stern warning to South Africans.
“We want to warn the people of South Africa not to allow themselves to be caught in this vicious web. We are gaining momentum in tracking those involved in this crime. Let this serve as a warning that it is only a matter of time before you are arrested,” he said.
@lanc_02
The Star