ROME Italy on Friday brought formal charges against 831 suspects in the production of child pornography videos and issued a fresh international warrant for the arrest of a Russian believed to be the mastermind behind the child-sex ring, judicial officials said.
According to an AFP report, public prosecutors in the Naples suburb of Torre Annunziata also put another 660 people in Europe, Malaysia and the United States under investigation after Italian police set up a bogus child-sex site on the Internet.
All 831 accusations involve Italians suspected of buying pictures and video cassettes featuring sex scenes with minors, without reselling the items which would be an aggravating offense.
Italian police launched a major operation to dismantle a child pornography ring almost two years ago after a complaint by a help group and arrested about 10 people late last month when nearly 500 cases were opened.
Over 3,000 video copies were seized in 610 police raids.
At the time, Italy issued international arrest warrants against Dimitry Viktor Kuznetsov and his two accomplices, Andrea Valery Minayev and Dimitry Valery Ivanov, for organizing child prostitution and the production and marketing of videos showing children being tortured to death in Kuznetsov's Moscow home.