Police swoop on child porn suspects

Thirteen people were arrested in the raids

Police have raided addresses across England and Scotland in what is believed to have been the UK's largest operation against people suspected of downloading child pornography from the internet.

The dawn raids involved 13 forces north and south of the border and were co-ordinated by the Metropolitan Police's Paedophile Unit.

Thirteen people were arrested and 27 computers recovered along with thousands of photographs, videos and magazines.

Most of the material recovered featured scenes of children being raped and sexually abused.

Two of the arrests were made in London after searches in Lewisham and Southwark.

Raids also took place in Grampian, Derbyshire, Merseyside, Humberside, Hertfordshire, West Yorkshire, Somerset, Bedfordshire, Lancashire, Devon, Cornwall, Berkshire and Sussex.

'Cycle of abuse'

Detective Chief Inspector Bob McLachlan, head of the Met's Paedophile Unit, said: "Today's operation is the result of an intelligence-led operation targeted at stemming the distribution of child pornography via the internet.

"Images like these are evidence of the sexual assault and rape of children - and anyone who buys or downloads them perpetuates the cycle of abuse."

He said: "We know that the internet is increasingly used as a conduit for the exchange of pornographic pictures of children.

"Those responsible believe that the internet affords anonymity, but police technology in this area is increasingly sophisticated.".

The intelligence operation leading to the raids had been ongoing since early 1999.

The Paedophile Unit, based at New Scotland Yard, investigates paedophiles and predatory sex offenders and the associated production of child pornography within London.

Earlier this month seven British men admitted their part in one of the biggest internet child pornography networks known as the Wonderland Club.

They were among 107 arrested after police in 12 countries smashed the international network in 1998 and seized 750,000 images of children.

Membership of the club was by invite only and on the "payment" of 10,000 indecent pictures of children, which were then encrypted and swapped on the internet.