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A man who was arrested on Tuesday in a child pornography bust in Sargodha had planned on travelling to Norway with children from his town to produce pornographic content, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) told Dawn.com on Thursday.
Saadat Amin had asked one James Lindstorm, his main client in Norway, to arrange for travel documents for visas for him and the children to travel to Norway, the FIA said. The children are between the ages of 8 and 14 years old.
The FIA was able to trace down Amin three months after being informed by Norwegian Embassy through a letter that the country’s police had arrested a man in connection with the child pornographic content and that Amin was one of his accomplices in Pakistan.
Amin had told Lindstorm that the children would be available for "proper acts in porn videos," the FIA told Dawn.com.
The FIA's cyber crime wing on Tuesday arrested Amin, who had lured some 25 local children into child pornography on the pretext of providing them with computer education.
Amin later confessed that he had been "introduced to the child pornography industry" by Lindstorm, who became his main client.
"Lindstorm is a member of the international racket of child pornography business," the FIA said.
Amin had remained in contact with Lindstorm via Whatsapp, Skype and Facebook over the "past few years", the FIA said.
The suspect produced videos of the children "performing sexual acts", the FIA said.
Nude images of the children were also produced and the pornographic content was sold to Lindstorm in Norway, the FIA said.
Amin received between US$100 and $400 in separate transactions via Western Union from Lindstrom as payment for the videos and images he produced, the FIA added.
In addition to the content he produced himself, Amin made money by hacking Russian and Bangladeshi porn websites, the FIA said.
The FIA said it has not yet established contact with any of the children who fell prey to Amin's scam, or their parents.
"It will be difficult to trace these children. However, [the FIA] may reach them through [the] suspect who is currently being interrogated," FIA said.
65,000 child pornography clips recovered
The FIA recovered some 65,000 child pornography video clips from the suspect’s possession hacked from foreign websites.
Amin, a graduate of the University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Taxila Campus, is resident of Malak Wal, Mandi Bahauddin. Later, he moved to Sargodha where he indulged in the heinous activity.
While being interrogated by the FIA, Amin confessed that he had been selling child pornographic content online for the last few years after accepting a deal made by Lindstorm to do so.
"He [Lindstorm] would pay me between $100 and $400 for different videos involving young boys," Amin had said during his confession.
“The suspect is a good hacker and also had links with some policemen in Sargodha who often engaged him for preparation of criminals’ record,” one of the investigators, Assistant Director Asif Iqbal said.
The FIA is still investigating whether Amin had any accomplices in this criminal act.
