A year after a nationwide raid against one of the largest child pornography platforms on the darknet, a court in the western German city of Mönchengladbach on Monday sentenced the operators. The five men received prison terms ranging from five and a half to eleven and a half years, in one case with subsequent preventive detention, the regional court announced. They were active as moderators or administrators on a platform called "Alice in Wonderland," in which users from all over the world exchanged photos and videos showing severe sexual abuse of girls, including babies. The defendants come from the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Bavaria. Accused of gang-related distribution of child pornography, four were sentenced almost in accordance with prosecutors' demands for up to 13 years behind bars. A 46-year-old man from Munich was also ordered to be held in preventive detention because he was classified as a dangerous repeat offender with a high probability of reoffending. The sentences against four defendants are not yet final, while the fifth has accepted the sentence. All five admitted the charges during the trial. In their closing arguments, defence lawyers for the five defendants acknowledged that their clients had committed "the worst crimes." However, they argued that their confessions should be taken into account. Investigators first tracked down the perpetrators in 2019. They came across a user from Duisburg who handed over his login details for the child pornography forum to the officers. After several years of investigation, the authorities struck at the end of September 2024, arresting the defendants and shutting down the platform. Extensive evidence was seized during the raid in six German states.