
Military General Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz described Thursday's operation as "without doubt the biggest of this kind in the country." While local media reported that some of the arrested were repeat offenders, others had never been detained due to the difficulty of tracking down digital evidence.īrazil's largest anti-child-porn raid ever ChelloĪuthorities in the capital also said that those arrested ranged in age from 20 years old to seniors and included teachers and public sector workers. "Light in Childhood" is the second large-scale raid against child pornography that Brazil has undertaken since fall 2017 Image: picture-alliance/Zuma Press/M. However, security officials did not go into greater detail due to security reasons about how the evidence had been found. The coordinator of the cybercrimes lab, Alessandro Barreto, said that all the targets had "considerable quantities" of digital files containing child pornography in their possession, with the smallest number of files totaling 150. The security minister added that over one million pieces of pedophile content had been uncovered during the raid. The suspects had been identified based on digital evidence that provided "sufficient indications of authorship and criminal material." He added that the number was likely to rise in the next hours as the operation continued. Speaking at a press conference in Brasilia, Jungmann said that individuals who were detained had been caught while committing an offense, which includes being in possession of or sharing criminal material. The operation was coordinated by the newly-formed Extraordinary Ministry for Public Security headed up by Raul Jungmann, the former defense minister. The operation saw some 2,600 civil police officers fan out over 24 of Brazil's 26 federal states, as well as the capital federal district of Brasilia, to serve 578 search and arrest warrants for crimes of sexual exploitation of children and adolescents. Thousands of officers, hundreds of warrantsīrazilian newspaper O Globo put the number of those arrested Thursday as high as 170. The operation was also the biggest to ever take place in Brazil.Ĭalled "Light in Childhood 2," it followed up on a previous raid in October that led to 112 arrests. At least 132 individuals were arrested Thursday in what Brazilian authorities said was the world's largest crackdown on child pornography and sexual exploitation ever to take place in a single day.
