1.4 million photos

Polish police, with assistance from Interpol, have arrested 55 people on pedophilia-related charges during the search of 543 apartments across Poland.

Zbigniew Urbanski of the Polish police headquarters said people distributing child pornography on the Internet may face up to 8 years in jail, while those possessing incriminating pictures may be jailed up to 5 years, Polish Radio reported Friday.

Urbanski said police in Austria and the Netherlands had supplied Internet addresses of computers from which thousands of CD and DVD contents were disseminated or downloaded. More than 300 arrests involving child pornography were made in France during four days of raids that began Monday, the BBC reported. More than 1.4 million photos and 20,000 videos were seized.

Police were continuing activities in search for more members of the pedophilia ring as more links could be uncovered on the 435 seized personal computers in Poland.

One of the arrested people had more than 150,000 pornographic pictures of children, Urbanski said.

earthtimes.org