PAEDIATRICIAN ARRESTED ON CHILD PORN CHARGES
Head of Immunology and Rheumatology at the Garrahan Hospital arrested on possession of child pornography.
Anine-month investigation into a child pornography network in Argentina on Wednesday ended with the arrest of a senior doctor at Buenos Aires City’s Garrahan Hospital and a 23-year-old man in Córdoba province.
Paediatrician Ricardo Alberto Russo was detained by police as part of an investigation led by US Homeland Security and the Brazilian Federal Police, which had advised their Argentine counterparts in November 2018 that over 890,000 files of child pornography had been shared from Argentina servers using peer-to-peer technology.
The 55-year-old is the head of Immunology and Rheumatology at the Garrahan. His home in the Belgrano neighbourhood was raided as part of the investigation.
“Information was obtained from an encrypted system in the deep web, where people participate in the exchange of material involving children in truly terrible situations of sexual abuse”, Argentina’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich said during a press conference Thursday.
“An international paedophile network has been dismantled”, Bullrich added, thanking her US and Brazilian counterparts for their “team work”.
Some of the images seized “appear to be inside a clinic”, Buenos Aires City’s Security Minister and Vice-Mayor Diego Santilli said, speak ing alongside Bullrich. The country’s Public Prosecutors Office supported that claim, saying “some of the images appear to have been taken inside the very hospital” where Russo works. The hospital will act as a plaintiff in the case, hospital officials confirmed in a statement.
The investigation known as “Luz de Infancia III” began in November, 2018.
Over 90 USB sticks, 99 hard disks, 4,228 CDs and BlueRay disks, 57 laptop computers and 11 cameras were among the items seized during raids.
Russo did not provide an initial statement to the court after his lawyer refused to accept the case. The 55-year-old will be represented, for now, by a court-appointed lawyer.
A second alleged perpetrator, a 23-year-old man, was detained in the city of Río Tercero in Córdoba province on charges of “holding and distributing child pornography”.
The investigation involved 40 raids across Brazil and Argentina.
In Argentina: 16 in Buenos Aires province, 11 in the City of Buenos Aires, four in Santa Fe province, two in Chaco province and one each in Entre Ríos, Santiago del Estero, Catamarca, La Rioja, Mendoza, La Pampa and Río Negro provinces.