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OTTAWA - A child pornography investigation that began in Australia 18 months ago has followed a circuitous path around the world into the homes of nine arrested Canadians.
Canadian and international police agencies announced the arrests Tuesday, and said another 50 ongoing investigations continue in this country.
The charges relate to a horrific child porn website based in Ukraine that provided customized videos of sexual abuse to paying customers worldwide.
All nine of the Canadians arrested so far were men and at least one, arrested two weeks ago in Peel Region, just outside Toronto, was a former Scout leader.
Police have no evidence of Canadian child victims to date, although one suspect still at large is alleged to have communicated a desire to get his daughters involved.
"I would say that there will be more arrests," RCMP Supt. Earla-Kim McColl told a news conference in Ottawa.
"The majority of investigations are still ongoing and there are a number of identified individuals that will be contacted by their local police very shortly."
More than 92 European arrests were revealed in November as part of the investigation code-named Operation Koala.
The operation involved 30 countries and identified about 2,500 potential suspects, including 98 from Canada.
"The customers come from all layers of society: amongst them are teachers, social workers, swimming instructors," said Menno Hagemeijer of Europol.
Two sisters from Belgium, aged 9 and 11, and 21 Ukrainian girls aged 9-16 are among the victims located by police.
Eighteen Canadian law enforcement agencies are involved in the investigations. Some of Canada's 98 individual e-mail accounts linked to the case have yet to be tracked to their owners.
But McColl said this was not a situation where innocent web browsers stumbled into the wrong place.
"They sought it out, they previewed the samples, they paid in advance and they waited for a password to download the videos."
The site permitted subscribers to purchase lingerie for the children to wear in custom videos, and for a fee would let people participate in the making of the videos.
Among the Canadians arrested are a former Scout leader from the Toronto area, a 40-year-old man from Edmonton who had a vast cache of other child pornography in addition to the website movies, and a Victoria resident whose home had a telescope overlooking a schoolyard.
Police say the child pornography was produced mainly in the Ukraine, with some material filmed in Belgium and the Netherlands.
An Italian allegedly at the centre of the ring has been arrested and identified as Sergio Marzola.
Last February, Canadian authorities became involved after some 600 e-mail messages originating in this country were identified among some 50,000 messages between Marzola and potential customers.
McColl says there are about a dozen other cases in RCMP hands that are similar to Operation Koala, which is nowhere near the biggest such child pornography ring known to police. In 1999, a Texas-based ring led to the identification of some 2,000 Canadian customers.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day issued a release applauding the current investigation, noting the last federal budget added $6 million to help protect kids from online predators and stop human trafficking.
"Child sexual abuse of any kind is a horrifying crime," said Day.
McColl was purposefully explicit and shocking in her description of child pornography.
She said 80 per cent of all such images show pre-pubescent children, "including babies, being penetrated orally, anally and vaginally."
She added that the "easy accessibility of child pornography doesn't make it legal. Even an attempt to access this material is criminal."
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