Armenian exchange student arrested in Istanbul on child pornography charges

ISTANBUL

A medical student from Armenia, who has been part of an exchange program at Istanbul University’s Cerrahpaşa Faculty of Medicine, has been arrested over allegedly downloading and sharing child pornography, daily Habertürk reported on Jan. 15.

The 24-year-old suspect was detained by police in an operation after intelligence shared by the U.S.-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a non-profit organization that deals with missing and sexually exploited children.

Having identified the IP address of the suspect, the NCMEC notified the Turkish authorities of data related to how to find the suspect, after which police officers found and detained him.

The suspect has denied the charges and was released over lack of evidence as his computer and hard disks were encrypted. Following a lengthy investigation undertaken by cybercrime police units, the codes on his computer were cracked and thousands of child pornography images were found.

A second detention warrant was then issued by the Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office and the suspect was arrested on charges of “downloading, saving, and sharing child abuse images via accessing banned Internet sites.”