Italian child-sex ring arrests

ROME, Italy -- Police in Italy believe they have broken a paedophile ring suspected of abusing children as young as five.

Among those arrested at the end of a nine-month investigation were doctors, businessmen and a school cleaner.

Police said on Monday they face charges relating to rape and forcing children into prostitution.

As well as the six arrests, police seized 89,000 explicit pictures, 128 video films and 5,000 files. Ninety-one children, whose ages range from five to 13, were sexually abused, police said.

Officials also said plans by group members to kill various judges and police who fought paedophilia had been confiscated.

Police said the leader of the ring -- known as both the Paedophile Liberation Front and the Praetorian Brigade -- is a former police captain who was arrested in September on paedophilia charges. He is already in prison.

The primary school cleaner is believed to have helped the group use school rooms to film adolescents being subjected to violence.

Last year Italy set up a five-ministry cabinet committee to combat child-sex abuse.

It followed the sexual assaults and slayings of five-year-old Hagere Kilani and eight-year-old Graziella Mansi.

Kilani, a Tunisian immigrant, was abducted, raped and repeatedly stabbed to death in Imperia on the Italian Riviera.

Mansi was sexually assaulted and then burned alive in the southern Puglia region.