Pretoria: 18 March 2015 – This week, a team of specialised detectives from the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit (FCS) of Gauteng arrested a couple from the Eastern Cape for possessing and distributing child pornography.
They were arrested during an operation that was conducted between the SAPS, the Belgian police and with the assistance of the United States of America’s FBI. While searching the couple’s residence in Port Elizabeth, the team found 15 hard drives, two cellular phones, 124 compact discs, two USBs, two cameras and one micro SD card. The couple, a 33-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman. They have already appeared in the Port Elizabeth Magistrate’s Court on 17 March 2015 and were granted R5 000,00 bail each. The couple has been warned to reappear in the same court on 24 April 2015.
Investigations into this network of child pornography,commenced a few months back when authorities in Belgium arrested a man for the possession of this forbidden material. Details of this network first came to the fore in the city of Antwerp, Belgium. Further investigations led the team to a 37-year-old man from Plettenberg Bay in the Western Cape, who was arrested in February this year. The police managed to find evidence on the computer material of the suspect from Plettenberg Bay, which led them to the couple from Port Elizabeth.
This arrest came soon after the same detectives of FCS arrested a man from the Eastern Cape for a similar crime. he team arrested a 53-year-old man from Grahamstown for possessing, distributing and dealing in child pornography, nearly a week ago. Most of the users of his material were found to have been from the United States of America.
This man is out on R50 000,00 bail. His arrest and that of the couple from Port Elizabeth are not related to the arrest of the man in Plettenberg Bay, even though they are similar in nature.
