Gardaí have carried out searches at nine locations across Ireland as 18 devices were seized as evidence as part of an international operation targeting the sharing and distribution of child sexual abuse material.
Gardaí say the searches were conducted yesterday, coordinated by the Online Child Exploitation Unit
They haven't specified if those locations were residential addresses or not. The investigation is being led by Polish police and Europol's cybercrimetaskforce.
Operation Fever has so far led to 166 arrests across Europe.
They were identified as having produced films or images of child sex abuse - possessed the material - run paedophile forums online - and in 'many' cases they were suspected of having physically harmed children.
Gardaí will now examined the devices they've seized and say a number of arrests will be made in due course
Led by the Polish National Police in conjunction with Europol’s Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (JCAT) and 11 member states, Operation FEVER has led to 166 arrests across Europe.
Of these, 111 people have so far been arrested for sharing and distributing child sexual abuse material.
Those arrested were identified to have produced paedophile films and images, run paedophile forums online, shared or possessed child sexual abuse material, and in many cases were suspected of having physically abused children.
Police officers attached to European police services with the support of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Crime Agency (NCA), the Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) have conducted more than 770 searches in Europe.
These searches have secured the seizure of more than 594,000 files with illegal content contained on more than 6,000 digital media platforms.
