Czech police are investigating groups of mostly young people hunting for paedophiles on the internet to blackmail them or beat them up, a spokesman said Friday.
Pretending they are children, the self-proclaimed “paedophile hunters” contact sexual predators online, often exchanging pornographic material with them, and ask to meet, police said.
“At the meeting, the group confronts or menaces the sexual predators, or they attack or blackmail them,” police spokesman Jakub Vincalek said in a statement.
“The hunters shoot videos of the encounter and then publish them on social networks,” he added.
Czech police were working in cooperation with Europe’s police agency Europol, the spokesman said.
Similar groups are active across Europe and the Czech “hunters” drew inspiration from the foreign social networks.
“The paedophile hunting groups are trying to act as self-proclaimed protectors of society taking justice into their hands,” Vincalek said.
He added that police were investigating several crimes linked to the groups including robbery and causing serious injury.
“An alarming fact is that the largest group the detectives are investigating… comprises above all youths,” Vincalek said.
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