Israeli paid Colombians to film violent child pornography — court

An Israeli man was charged on Sunday with commissioning the production of violent child pornography and possessing huge quantities of exceedingly graphic videos and pictures.

According to the charge sheet in the Tel Aviv District Court, the suspect has been consuming abusive and often pedophilic pornography for years, downloading thousands of videos and tens of thousands of pictures from the so-called “dark web,” an unmapped portion of the internet that is often used by criminals to buy and sell illicit wares.

The man’s name was being withheld by the court, but he is described as approximately 50 years old and from central Israel. He is an employee of Israel’s defense services, though the court did not specify which branch.

The suspect was arrested on February 13, but was released to house arrest two days later on condition that he keep away from computers and cellphones. According to the State Attorney’s Office, while under house arrest the suspect accessed the internet anyway and “solicited the abuse of children.”

On Sunday, the Tel Aviv court agreed to a demand by the state prosecutors to keep the suspect in custody until the end of his trial.

The man is not accused of personally assaulting children, but is suspected of paying others to do so on multiple occasions.

Yuval Orr surfs the dark net in a scene from “Down the deep, dark web” (Courtesy)

He allegedly used websites on the dark web to contact producers of graphic, violent pornography, as well as consumers of it.

According to the charge sheet, the suspect made contact with two movie producers in Colombia in April 2015 and paid them NIS 5,700 ($1,550) to make him a film that would include a woman viciously attacking a young boy.

“The demand was that it should hurt the boy during filming and that you should be able to see the boy suffer,” according to the indictment.

He allegedly reached out to the producers through the internet and paid them through the Paypal money transfer website.

The suspect remained in contact with the Colombian producers until his arrest in January and commissioned eight additional videos showing sexual violence perpetrated against children.

‘The demand was that it should hurt the boy during filming and that you should be able to see the boy suffer’

These videos featured both physical violence against the young children and rape according to the indictment.

After watching the videos, the man allegedly complained to the producers that “they were not as extreme as he demanded.”

Nevertheless, he allegedly promised to purchase more videos from them and put the producers in touch with other potential customers, according to the indictment.

On two separate occasions in October 2016, the suspect allegedly contacted women online and offered to pay them NIS 1,100 ($300) to sexually abuse a child so that he could watch through the Skype video messaging application.

In both instances, the women said they “would not be able to make a movie in accordance with” his requests, according to the charge sheet.

The suspect is also accused of helping disseminate child pornography, as well as videos of severe animal cruelty.

According to the indictment, the suspect had in his possession “hundreds of gigabytes” of pornographic content, which included videos showing bestiality and the rape of women, children and infants.

The suspect also collected videos of animals being dismembered while they were still alive, according to the charge sheet.

He allegedly gave out passwords to his collection on 280 occasions so that others could watch the videos that he had collected.

The suspect will be prosecuted by the state attorney’s cyber crimes division.

He was charged with soliciting the use of a minor’s body for the creation of child pornography, attempting to solicit the use of a minor’s body for the creation of child pornography, soliciting the abuse of a child, attempting to solicit the abuse of a child, publishing illegal pornography, publishing child pornography and two counts of possession of child pornography.