On Thursday, Police in Toronto announced the arrest of 348 people in various countries and the rescue of 386 victims in relation to an international network of child pornography and sexual abuse. 

The arrests were made ​​after a three-year investigation with the collaboration of Spain, Mexico, the U.S. and Australian authorities.

The Canadian authorities have filed more than 20 charges against the owner of a Toronto company which manufactured, processed, distributed, exported and sold explicit images of children from the age of 2 year up to adolescence.

Some of these images showed such graphic sex abuse that even the police described them as the worst images they had ever encountered.

The investigation began in October 2010 after Toronto police became suspicious of Azovfilms.com, a local company which subsequently ceased operations in 2011.

It was owned by 41-year-old Brian Way. The police think the videos were edited in Canada by the company but filmed all over the world.

Azovfilms.com was apparently a sophisticated site which was said to be similar to Amazon, where clients paid by credit card and the company made assurances that the content of the videos didn’t violate any of the Canadian or US laws.