El Salvador police arrest 30 in child pornography case

Prosecutors in El Salvador said Friday police have arrested 30 suspects who allegedly shared child pornography photos on the messaging platform WhatsApp.

An inspection of the suspects’ phones revealed sexual images of children, adolescents and disabled people.

Henri Gutiérrez, the head prosecutor for the township of Zaragoza, said the investigation started in 2018. Gutiérrez said the search extended across much of the country and netted two ringleaders who allegedly used WhatsApp accounts registered to Mexican numbers to share the images.

Those imaged appear to have been distributed to accounts in Mexico and Guatemala, and also as far away as Pakistan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Ghana.