Trinity Case: This is how the largest pedophilia network ever exposed in Catalonia fell.

BarcelonaThe Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) had been investigating TLM, then 40 years old, as a suspected pedophile since 2020. Ultimately, the man has emerged as the mastermind of a massive network of sexual violence against minors and unprecedented child pornography, forcing the courts to open three separate cases. When he was arrested in 2022, officers discovered more than 10,000 photographs and nearly 2,000 videos on his devices, with many more attackers implicated. Police sources admit that the detailed review of the images was a long and arduous process that concluded in 2024 with the arrest of 15 more men and the identification of at least 11 victims: nine girls, including a minor in the care of the Generalitat (Catalan government), and two boys. However, at least 14 others appeared in the images. Mossos d'Esquadra sources claim that this case in Barcelona is the second largest investigation into pedophilia they have ever conducted in Catalonia.

To learn about the largest police investigation into pedophilia ever carried out in the country, the so-called Trinity case, we have to go back to 2015. At that time, a joint operation between the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) and the Civil Guard uncovered a child abuse and pornography network that recruited vulnerable minors to sexually assault them and film them in more than 300 pornographic shoots in other countries such as Thailand. The nerve center of the network was Tortosa, although the pedophiles recruited children from vulnerable backgrounds in Barcelona, ​​​​Morocco, the Czech Republic, and Thailand. Typically, in exchange for money or drugs, they recorded them and distributed the images.

It is estimated that the attackers in the Trinity case spent at least 15 years abusing, humiliating, and filming minors, and the joint operation between the Mossos d'Esquadra and the Civil Guard resulted in seven arrests. There are certain parallels between this case and the one uncovered in Barcelona. The first victim of the Barcelona investigation was a minor under the care of the General Directorate for Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA). Among the victims, estimated to number more than 100, although only 18 between the ages of 11 and 16 were identified, were also young people under the care of the Generalitat (Catalan government).

The escape

In 2019, when the Tarragona Court took over the case, three suspects fled. Among them were Jean-Luc Aschbacher, a French citizen considered the leader of the plot, and Bernard Georges Arson, another of the main suspects. In May 2021, they were finally arrested. However, the third fugitive, Youness En Naciri, did not end up in the hands of the police until this April 2025. The Mossos d'Esquadra had been searching for him since 2019 and He was arrested on Thursday, April 17 in a hotel room in the city of Bodrum, on the Turkish Mediterranean coast, in an operation supported by an international Interpol arrest warrant. His identity was confirmed with a fingerprint analysis, and authorities later located his passport hidden in his suitcase.

Aschbacher, the leader of the network, was sentenced to 240 years in prison for soliciting minors, subjecting them to sexual abuse in which he himself participated, for producing and distributing child pornography, and for belonging to a criminal organization. At the same time, Arson was sentenced to 19 years in prison for soliciting minors and producing and distributing child pornography, although it was considered proven that he did not abuse the victims as his boss did.

For now, regarding the Barcelona macro-network, only two of the thirty men involved will go to trial for sexually assaulting minors. Although the police investigation has been closed with 16 other arrests and 14 suspects pending identification, sources close to the case consulted by ARA explain that only two men have been identified during the investigation, and they will be the only ones to be prosecuted. The main problem is that the attackers' faces are almost never seen in the recordings, and they cannot be recognized. Among the suspects, however, the court has gathered enough evidence to charge at least four other men with possession of child pornography.