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The Hellenic Child Protection Foundation "The Smile of the Child" has issued an Amber Alert for a missing girl from the centre of Athens. Patricia-Veronica Kourovska is seventeen and a half years old and disappeared from her home in Kato Patisia neighbourhood on Tuesday, 13 May.

The girl is 1.75 metres tall and weighs 65 kg. She has long black hair and blue eyes. She is shortsighted and wears glasses or sometimes contact lenses instead of them.

The Foundation appeals to those who know anything about the disappearance of Patricia-Veronica to call the nearest police station or the 11600 European phone line for missing children.

At the same time, the Greek police department for combating electronic crimes has announced the results of the operation to find participants in paedophile networks throughout the world.

Within the context of an operation codenamed "Hydra" that lasted over seven months, members of the service detected a total of 78 people whose electronic traces were found in 32 different countries. In addition to Greece, they found paedophiles in Germany, Russia, USA, UK, France, Poland, Sweden, China, Czech Republic, Iran, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Colombia, Georgia, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Australia, Canada, Portugal, Mexico, Bahamas, Austria, Slovenia and Belgium.

Following the disclosures, the authorities in Greece composed three pre-trial files and apprehended three persons in Athens and Ioannina, including two Greek citizens aged 34 and 25, and one paediatrician from Bulgaria, namely Svetozar Zachariev, aged 47. All three were charged with distribution of pornographic materials that showed minors on the Internet.

The 34-year-old Greek was captured in November 2013 after the service found out that, through a special Peer-to-Peer program (P2P) for file exchange on the Internet, he had distributed materials with especially hard porn content involving children.

The members of the service investigated the specific program in order to detect other users who possessed, and offered, child pornographic materials.

In late April, they apprehended the 47-year-old paediatrician in Ioannina. During a search of his house, they found a large number of extremely shocking pornographic materials involving children. Svetozar Zachariev was charged for distribution via the Internet, and possession of, child pornography involving a child under the age of 15.

According to the police, the paediatrician had played a central role in a closed group of users of the particular file exchange program. They tried to hide their illegal activity on the Internet using a program to hide their electronic identity and through encryption.

Days later the police arrested the third person involved in the network, namely a man, aged 25, whose laptop contained archived files (videos and photos) with pornographic content involving minors.

The laboratory analyses of the files showed that the materials containing particularly shocking scenes were detected for the first time.

The general data found during the operations in the countries mentioned previously have been sent to Interpol and Europol in order for them to capture the other users of the program as well to establish the exact number of the materials exchanged through it and to identify the possible victims of child pornography.