Global paedophile ring smashed: Police warn of more arrests after 13 Australian children saved and 19 men charged following investigation sparked by murder of two FBI agents

A police commander has refused to rule out further arrests after 13 Australian children were saved from a global paedophile ring. 

An extraordinary cross-border investigation led to 19 Australian men being charged.

Two have already been convicted, while 17 are facing court. 

But the Australian Federal Police are not ruling out further arrests.

‘While we have charged 19 people, the AFP and our partners do not rule out further arrests in relation to this matter,’ Commander Helen Schneider told a press conference on Tuesday.

AFP Commander Helen Schneider (pictured) has refused to rule out further arrests after 19 Australian men were charged and 13 children saved following a bust of a global paedophile ring 

She added: ‘The longer people like this avoid detection, the longer the cycle of abuse continues.’

‘This was a sophisticated network.’

Commander Schneider said that some of the child victims were known to the alleged offenders.

‘We will allege that some of the children were known to the men who were arrested but I will not comment any further in relation to the victims,’ she said. 

AFP Commander Schneider said most of the individuals arrested were experienced in information and communications technology (ICT), making their ‘sophisticated network’ harder to track down.

‘I can advise that the majority of these individuals were experienced in ICT or in current ICT roles, so a high level of technical competency,’ she said.

‘They were an online peer-to-peer network and some of those had dark web capabilities and encryption.

‘It was those aspects that made this group challenging to target.’

Nitiana Mann, legal attaché for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States who also appeared at the press conference, said the investigation was only possible through the close aprtnership between the FBI and the Australian law enforcement community. 

‘Today, we celebrate the rescue of 13 children,’ she said. 

More to come.