A 20-year-old man has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of engaging in an online campaign of cybergrooming and virtual sexual abuse of children, including pressuring a 13-year-old American boy to kill himself and livestream the act, authorities said Wednesday.
The German-Iranian man was arrested Tuesday. The man, whose name was not made public in line with German privacy rules, was taken into custody at his parents’ apartment in the northern city of Hamburg. Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to bring formal charges. He denied wrongdoing in a closed-doors appearance before a judge, authorities said.
“The acts exceed human imagination,” Hamburg Attorney General Jörg Fröhlich said at a news conference Wednesday, German news agency dpa reported.
Through his online pseudonym, “White Tiger,” the suspect preyed on desperate children in online forums, including those discussing suicide, dpa reported. Investigators believe he exploited their vulnerabilities, forcing them to create pornographic and violent recordings where they injured themselves to the point of bleeding during live chats.
The man made recordings of the acts to keep as trophies, investigators said, and used them as leverage against the victims by threatening to publish them unless the children committed even more self-harm on camera.
The man is suspected of committing 120 crimes against eight victims, ages 11 to 15, who were from Germany, England, Canada and the U.S. Another of the victims, a 14-year-old Canadian girl, attempted to take her own life.
I don’t want to make any definitive statements until all the facts are in, but White Tiger seems like a bit of a dick.
The radio reported that he’s part of “764”, a satanic neo-nazi transnational organisation that’s been classified as a terrorist network in the US and that’s been tied to the Order of Nine Angles.
I can’t help but wonder how children got into engaging in such behaviour. One other perpetrator was sentenced to 80 years in prison in the US. He’s 15 years old. I wonder if the perpetrators in this network were dragged into it the same way they treated their victims with the goal of producing more content for the people who are behind all of this.
If you need a deep dive on this hell hole (764), Popular Front did a massive episode a few months ago.
Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. The stuff on wikipedia was fucked up enough for me.
