FBI agents' murders lead to 98 arrests in US, Australia over alleged child sex abuse

Canberra: More than two years after two FBI agents were assassinated while looking into an alleged global paedophile network, authorities in the US and Australia announced on Tuesday that 98 people have been detained in connection with child sex abuse and 13 children have been saved from harm, CNN reported.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Australian Federal Police (AFP) announced in a news conference on Tuesday that the joint operation resulted in 19 men being arrested in Australia and 79 arrests, 65 indictments, and 43 convictions in the US.
In 2021, while carrying out a search warrant for a computer programmer suspected of having child abuse materials, two FBI agents looking into the alleged ring were fatally shot, CNN previously reported.
Australian Federal Police Commander, Helen Schneider, said the alleged child abuse ring was a “peer-to-peer network” with “some offenders committing offences for over 10 years.”
“Some of the children were known to the men who were arrested,” Schneider added but refused to comment further.
The Australian police investigation started in 2022 when the FBI passed on details of Australian members of a peer-to-peer network allegedly sharing child abuse material on the dark web.
 “This operation was highly complex,” the FBI’s legal attaché in Canberra, Nitiana Mann, told reporters Tuesday. “The complexity and anonymity of these platforms mean that no agency or country can fight these threats alone,” according to CNN.
Police said in a statement that most of the Australian alleged offenders were into jobs that required advanced IT skills.
Members of the network allegedly used “software to anonymously share files, chat on message boards and access websites within the network,” using encryption and “other methods to avoid law enforcement detection,” the statement added.
Australian Federal Police Commander Schneider also said the alleged offenders operated a “sophisticated network.”
“Viewing, distributing and producing child abuse material is a horrific crime, and the lengths that this network went to avoid detection is an indication of just how dangerous they were,” she said.
 “The longer people like this avoid detection, it means the longer the cycle of abuse continues.”
Further arrests could not be ruled out, she added.
Over 200 international leads had been sent to partner countries and more than 300 investigations opened as a result of the joint operation, Mann said.
FBI Special Agents Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger were killed in a shootout at a Sunrise, Florida apartment complex while executing a federal search warrant on February 2, 2021, according to CNN.
Three other agents were injured and the suspect in the shooting died at the scene.
Their deaths marked the first time since November 2008 that an FBI agent was fatally shot in the line of duty, CNN reported. (ANI)