Austria has uncovered a vast international child pornography ring involving 2,361 suspects from 77 countries who viewed videos of young children being sexually abused.

Guenther Platter, the Interior Minister, said: “This is the largest case of the distribution of child pornography ever.”

He said the videos included images that showed “the worst kind of child sexual abuse.”

Harald Gremel, who headed the police investigation, said: “Girls could be seen being raped, and you could also hear screams,” adding that the children were aged 14 and under.

The Austrian authorities said 72 of the suspects were based in Britain; 23 are from Austria; 607 from the United States; 466 from Germany and 114 from France.

Police said that the Austrian suspects, who ranged in age from 17 to 69, included students, civil servants and retired people.

The suspects were identified after they viewed child pornography videos on a Russian website hosted by an Austrian internet provider last July.

Eight videos were illegally uploaded onto the website from a London server. Some 8,000 viewers logged on to the site in the space of 24 hours before police shut it down and tracked the suspects through their internet addresses in an investigation named Operation Flo.

Mr Gremel said that the videos showed children as young as five years old. He said: “The videos were presumably produced in eastern Europe.”

Police said that investigations are continuing in Britain and in Russia to identify and arrest those behind the videos.

The 23 suspects from Austria have been called in for questioning but there have been no arrests yet. A police spokesman said he expected warrants to be issued soon.

He said that fourteen of the suspects admitted owning child pornography, some in large quantities, and that some said they had passed the material on to other people.

Possession of pornographic material showing children under the age of 14 can lead to a two-year prison sentence in Austria. Those found guilty of producing or distributing such material face up to three years in jail.

Police have confiscated 31 desk top computers, seven laptops, 23 external hard drives and more than 2,000 CDs, DVDs and videos containing child pornography.

Austrian investigators also identified suspects from Algeria, Iceland and Venezuela. The investigation on suspects outside Austria has now been handed over to the countries concerned.

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