The Civil Guard arrests a passenger who lost a suitcase with pedophile material in Barajas

The Civil Guard has arrested a passenger who lost his luggage at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport that contained a USB storage device with pedophile material. The loss occurred in October 2023 and it was the staff of the company in which he traveled who detected the criminal content and reported the facts. The Civil Guard then began an investigation that led to a man residing in Seville, who was arrested in February of this year. During the search of his home, the agents seized several devices that contained more pedophile images, including minors having relations with adults and animals.

It all started on October 17 of last year when, after a flight from northern Europe, a suitcase was left abandoned at the airport. The Iberia airline staff, following the established protocol, opened it in search of some identifying element. Among other things, he saw sports items that indicated that the luggage belonged to a man. They also found a USB device that they inserted into a computer to see if it could provide more clues about the owner of the missing suitcase. That's when they found the sexual images of minors. At that moment they abandoned the inspection and reported the finding to the Fiscal Analysis and Investigation Unit of the Civil Guard at the airport, who transferred the investigation to the judicial police team.

Investigators found a claim filed by a passenger to the airline for the loss of that suitcase. In addition, they identified identification among the sports clothing. It was a bag and clothing belonging to a long-distance race held in the country from which that flight came and in which the detainee had participated. After several efforts, the investigating court number 44 of Madrid authorized the entry and search of that man's habitual residence on February 21 in the Sevillian town of Pilas. During this inspection, the agents took a laptop, his personal cell phone and three USB drives.

Dumping all these devices yielded a gruesome result. Minors being forced to have relationships with adults, images of completely naked girls and even a video of sexual content of a minor under 14 years old with an animal. The researchers also confirmed that all this material was downloaded deliberately from one of the networks that pedophiles use to exchange content in encrypted form. They are networks and platforms in which files are transmitted directly between users to avoid the supervision of the platforms and thus be detected by the police. The detainee had also organized the contents into different folders according to their nature.

The man, Spanish and with no criminal record, was arrested and placed at the disposal of the judicial authority, who ordered his provisional release. The man is accused of a crime of sexual exploitation and possession of child pornography.

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