By Deborah Nnamdi
A German court on Monday sentenced five men to prison terms ranging from five and a half to ten and a half years for operating a notorious darknet platform used to share child sexual abuse material.
The court in Moenchengladbach, western Germany, found the men—aged between 44 and 63—guilty of managing the website Alice in Wonderland, where hundreds of thousands of users exchanged illicit images and videos.
According to a court spokesman, the judges also ordered one of the men to remain in preventative detention after serving his sentence, citing a high likelihood of reoffending.
The platform was dismantled following nationwide raids in September 2024. During the trial, which began in October, the defendants largely confessed to the charges. Prosecutors said the men acted as moderators and administrators between March 2019 and September 2024.
Investigators revealed that Alice in Wonderland was designed specifically for distributing child and youth pornographic content, with one of the defendants responsible for obscuring users’ identities in self-produced material to hinder law enforcement efforts.
Authorities further alleged that the platform facilitated real-world meetings where users sexually abused children. Some of the seized materials depicted victims as young as one year old.
Following its shutdown, officials described the site as one of the longest-running child abuse platforms ever uncovered in Germany, with millions of images and videos shared among its users.
