>> this is "dw news" live from berlin. a high-tech raid targets global gangsters, police around the world make more than 800 arrests after law enforcement agents sold encrypted phones to organized criminals and monitored their messages as they plotted drug deals, armed shipments and murder. also on the program, uniform n. judges upload madeleine brand's convictions and general suicide, crimes against humanity and war

crimes. the m behind the massacre will spend the rest of his life in prison. and as stocks dwindle, we hear about a local initiative that change fishing methods for a more sustainable future. i'm phil gayle, welcome to the program. police forces around the world have made hundreds of arrests as part of a major sting targeting organized crime networks. investigators say they gathered evidence by tricking suspects into using a messaging app controlled by the f.b.i. in the united states. the high-tech bust is being described as an unprecedented blow against the crime gangs. >> drugs, guns and money, lots of money.

that's on top of over 800 arrests worldwide in operation trojan shield. top law enforcement officials around the world worked together to distribute 20,000 devices they named to criminals who thought their messages were encrypted. while police read their communications. police disrupted dozens of plots, users who tried to check in on the website on tuesday were greeted with this message. this domain has been seized. the f.b.i. gave details. >> and to give you an idea of the magnitude of our penetration, we were able to actually see photographs of hundreds of tons of cocaine that were concealed in shipments of fruit. we were able to see hundreds of kilos of cocaine that were concealed in canned goods. >> australian police mounted

raids based on intercepted messages as did swedish and dutch cops among others. in germany, police made dozens of arrests. this measure is a very, very big blow against organized crime which increasingly uses encrypted internet communications to plan deeds. thinking that these communications cannot be perceived and monitored by law enforcement agencies. authorities admitted that they were only able to intercept a small percentage of criminal chats worldwide, but they sent a message. no communications are truly safe. >> let's get more from d.w. political correspondent hans, tell us more when these raids in germany. hans: well, here in germany, the strangest part about it is that

the raids were almost exclusively confined to the area around frankfurt where there is a very large international airport, the largest in germany, there were around 150 premises that were searched during these raids and someone around 80 people have so far been taken into custody. the german authorities say that there are likely to be further investigations, further cases developing out of all of this, but at the moment, that's the extent to which germany has been participating in this international raid, somewhere around 10% of the arrests and somewhere around 10% of the premises that were searched were in germany. phil: and tell us about the timing, why did authorities decide to act now? hans: there has not really been any official statement regarding that, after all, they have been listening in on this communication for a year-and-a-half, it would

imagine they could continue doing so forever, but there seems to be some indication that certain criminal acts of a very serious nature could be prevented by acting now. there has been talk of somewhere around several dozens murders that had been planned that have now been prevented, 10 of them in sweden, for instance. and there is also to be considered that much of this evidence is not necessarily admissible in court. there are certain jurisdictions, certain countries that put very severe restrictions on listening into communication and so the limited amount of communication that was listened to could still be used in court it seems, but in some jurisdictions, the courts seem to not have allowed further listening in on such communication. phil: if this is just the tip of the iceberg as we just heard, how do authorities plan to keep up with these types of criminal

activities in this digital environment? hans: well, obviously authorities are especially pointing to the successes in the recent years in this if fear, not only the encrypted phones that were given to criminals in the last year-and-a-half, there are also two encrypted communication networks, messaging apps that were, in fact, cracked by the law authorities, the police around the world that also led to hundreds of arrests and, in fact, three years ago, the manufacturer of such encrypted phones was also shut down so there have been major successes, but at the same time obviously digital technology is developing very, very quickly and in most cases, the authorities are one step behind the criminals. it's a race that is going on all the time. the most difficult part obviously for authorities is to find the networks that are in

the analog world. in other words, the drugs that are being sold, not just the messages that are passing back and forth. phil: thank you for that d.w. political correspondent. ratko mladic will spend the rest of his life in jail. u.n. judges have up hold the former commander's life sentence for masterminding genocide and other atrocities in the early 1990's. he led troops responsible for a string of deadly campaigns including the 1995 massacre and the siege of . >> this was the final on the butcher of bosnia. ratko mladic will spend the rest of his life behind bars. he oversaw the cold-blooded killing when his troops overran

the town. the slaughter is the only crime in europe that has been declared a genocide since world war ii. some of the victims' relatives traveled to the hague. this is a historic verdict, the war criminal has lived to hear the final ruling on his life sentence. our goal was never for someone to suffer, but to make him take responsibility for what he has done. victims are never fully satisfied with judgments, but i am partly satisfied today. in a city mladic held under siege for more than three years while his snipers and shells killed thousands of civilians, residents expressed subdued relief. he deserves the life sentence. i hope the mothers are satisfied with the verdict, at least those that survived. a life sentence is not enough. mladic should be sentenced to death just as he sentenced us to

death and killed us over here. but in other bosnia cities, many serbs continue claiming he was just trying to protect his people. the serb people and their politicians will never except the idea that general mladic is a war criminal nor that genocide was committed here. hand painted banners in the countryside testify to that sentimt. >> this is today one of the big challenges we have seenn the region that individuals who have been convicted for war crimes are still considered as heroes in parts of their communities and this is rlly a very sad velopment and definitely not contributing positively to the process of reconciliation. sarah: the verdict is an

important step. but for these women, there are still no guarantees that the hatred that led to the deaths of their sons and husbands has disappeared from bosnian society for good. phil: a child when the massacre took place and lost her older brother. she joins us from the memorial center in bosnia. welcome to d.w. what did you think when you heard that the verdict had been upheld? >> i was hearing in the memorial with the mothers as well to hear the verdict of ratko mladic. it was a relief, to be honest, because nothing is going to get our beloved ones back to life. however, this is some sort of satisfaction for us because it's a life imprisonment, so that's

what we hoped for. phil: you say a relief. did you think that perhaps that his appeal might have succeeded? >> well, it was always a dose of fear. however, we really didn't want to have that doubt that he is going to be released. the only thing that we are sorry for is that he is not convicted for genocide in the other six municipalities. however, he is convicted for genocide and the life imprisonment means a lot to us. phil: there are still people as we heard in the report in bosnia who deny the genocide, say it didn't took place or if it did, it happened for good reasons. here we are 30 years after that. clearly this issue is still simmering in the background there. >> yes, yes. and to be honest, 26 now from

genocide, it is more than ever we deal with the genocide deniers and our surroundings just a day before five kilometers from the memorial center, we hear that there were mass gathering of young people who support ratko mladic who consider him his hero, a role model which is something terrible to us. it's something i cannot think a human being can think of such human being that he is a role model and it is a long way ahead of us to find a way to these yog people, to convince them that he is a war criminal. it is sad for us that even this verdict in tribunal in hague is not proof enough for them that

he is a war criminal as he is. phil: thank you so much for joining us and sharing your experiences with us from the memorial center. >> thank you very much. phil: we'll take a look at some of the other stories making news around the world. u.s. vice president kamala harris and mexican president have held talks on migration and its causes. they witnessed the signing of a memorandum that aims to boost cooperation on aid and development programs in central america. french president macron has been slapped in the face during a walk about in southeast france. the entourage pulled the man to the ground. the president called it an isolated event and ultraviolent people shouldn't take over public debate. police say two people have been detained. canadian prime minister justin

true do has condemned a truck attack that killed four members of a muslim family. he told parliament it was a terrorist attack. a 9-year-old boy was the only survivor in ontario on sunday. peru's presidential election is too close to call with 95% left counted. the right wing rival is alleging voting irregularities. she has accused castillo's supporters of stealing votes. his party rejects the allegations. thousands of government news and social media websites around the world are coming back online after being hit by a massive outage. the disruption has been traced back to a popular cloud computing service provider which is used by major companies like amazon as well as several prominent news media.

users received error messages during the outage which lasted for about an hour. it was a technical issue and not related to a cyber attack. we can thank heaven for some small mercies. peter has more. welcome, peter, so not a cyber attack, so what happened? peter: well, it's not quite clear at this stage. i think what we need to understand here and what a lot of people may not know is how this works. this is not something that happens often, but it is easier than you think. many websites, especially big international ones rely on what is called a content delivery network. what does that mean? that means that lets say you run a company out of berlin. you have customers all around the world. you want to make sure, of course, that their user experience is as smooth as possible, that the website loads fast and that's where a service like fastly comes in. it has computer servers all

around the world that store the content of your website and no matter where your customers are, whether it's oslo or osaka, there is always going to be a server close by, that proximity, that physical prompt implement mean that their web site loads a lot faster. the problem now is, of course, you have essentially handed off responsibility or the fate of your website into passing it into someone else's hands. so when this content as we saw today, these networks break down, there is very, very little that the companies can actually do about it. phil: and this is what we saw today then? peter: exactly. and that i think is why we saw big international companies especially like amazon, popular news web sights like the "new york times" really left completely powerless for an hour there. the website of the u.k. government was also affected. i don't know if you were trying to get your passport or driver's license renewed today, chances

are you didn't get very far. check this out because some websites did come up with some pretty clever work arounds. a popular news cited verge created google's docs to get out to its readers and forget to turn off the editing function. the internet does what it does best and had some fun with it. the outage only lasted for about an hour. it really still underscores just how fragile the internet has become with so many companies relying on these services. it's estimated that even an hour's worth of downtime could cost companies up to at least a quarter of a million, in amazon's case, probably a lot more. phil: so the disruption was caused by what, somebody kicked a plug out, what happened? peter: we don't know, as you mentioned, it said it had to do with maybe a service configuration, oddly, there is a lot of speculation that it may have had to do with some sort of cyber attack.

we have seen a lot of those in recent weeks in the u.s., cyber criminals targeting companies trying to extort millions from them. there is nothing to suggest that this was the work of criminals, but cybersecurity specialists are very worried. just listen to this guy. >> cyber gangs around the world might just be thinking if it wasn't them, then that is the perfect attack and, therefore, they might start targeting those companies in the future. so either way, they're going to have to tighten their security. peter: what we're seeing there is a certain that even if this disruption was not caused by cyber criminals, a lot of them will be watching and will be inspired to target providers in the future, it would essentially allow them to kill not just one or two, but really thousands as we saw in this case birds with one stone. phil: peter rolle-dahl, thank

you for that. marine biologists around the world are marking world oceans day. global warming and overfishing are having an adverse impact on our seas and oceans. a new australian study has shown that many tropical waters are too warm for some species to survive and oceans around the equator are much less in marine life than in previous decades, like the waters of kenya where coral reefs are dying at record rates. scientists there are monitoring fish populations and have started to recruit local fishermen to try to help conserve endangered species. >> there are still fishes here even though the reefs have degraded. joanne and her colleague peter visit the cal ree every two years to check up on this

fragile ecosystem. >> this is the life where the ocean lies, you find different marine life. the feeding areas for the different mine life. >> these sites concluded we have four declining in the last two, three decades and that is a problem. >> as local fishermen know all too well. he was born and bred here and fishing has been his main source of income for years. >> the catch was still good when i started, but over the past four years, the number of fish has been declining. >> the marine biologists have enlisted the support of locals in their efforts to protect the coral reefs. they haveaught fishermen how

to count in zones and how to interpret their findings. for example, high numbers of clown fish in the coral reefs is a sign that the habitat is doing ll. they have also taught them a simple method of keeping juvenile fish out of their nets. the fishermen still use their traditional basket traps, but now use different mesh. >> we were insuring that the kind of mesh size that is being used is bigger and that is three-inch mesh sizes. the thinking around thats jus to insure that the kd of fish that is captured by the basket traps are not juveniles. >> she has been using the new kind of mesh in his traps for two years now. >> i hope i'll be able to catch more fish in the future, and so take better care of my family

and my parents. but considering the challenges we now face, i also wonder if this dream will ever come true. >> the scientists estimates that it will take up to 20 years for fish stocks to recover completely, but at least his children might benefit. phil: in football, stuttgart revealed that their striker has been living under a false identity. after being manipulated by a former agent when he was a teenager. he joined stuttgart in 2019. according to the club, the agent changed his name and date of birth as a way of controlling him after he arrived in europe in 2017. he is 22, a years older than

actually believed. stuttgart still expect him to be allowed to play in the bundesliga. he has the valid and correct documentation, he thanked stuttgart for their support and in a statement added over the past few years, i was constantly living in fear and was also very worried for my family in congo. it was a tough step for me to take to make any story public. well, johanna is a kenyan international footballer who plays in the turkish first division after playing in belgium. he started a foundation to help african youth. welcome to d.w. this situation, is it one you have seen before? how does it come about? >> thank you for having me. yeah, sadly, this is a situation that is still here and it's the lack of knowledge when a player comes from africa to europe.

the agent for silas, the agent told him that probably the younger you come here, the more chances you will have. well, silas has been brave enough to tell his story. there are also a lot who don't tell their stories. the main problem or main cause of this would be the lack of infrastructure. the kids in kenya in african-american, they lack the proper education to be able to compete in modern football in europe. so by the time they are finishing school, they are like 19, 20 years old and that's too late for them to start preparing. so they end up saying, yeah, only a chance. phil: do you think there are more african players in european football or indeed around the world who are here under, being

controlled by agents or other crimins? >> yeah, well, unfortunately there are some who do these kind of things because they take the players from africa, they don't know the system, how it works. yeah, unfortunately i think that's true. phil: you're on record saying that you think african footballers should stay in africa rather than pursue a career in europe, why? >> well, since i have been a kid with this idea if you want to be a professional football player, if you want to achieve your dreams, you only have to come to europe and that led to many of us just rushing to europe. you see like for 600 players who can just come to europe, maybe fiveilluccee to really be professional. so wht happens to the rest who undoubtedly, they have big potential.

so that's what i say, it's not really a success for africa. if they stay in africa, if they make conditions better for them in africa, then no doubt they will help us on the whole continent. phil: wish you well in your efforts. thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. phil: a herd of wild elephants has been found asleep in southeastern china. it's a contrast to the havoc they caused when first spotted in april. officials scrambled to make sure public safety as the beasts roamed through populated areas and crops on destruction. no one knows why they set out on their trek which has captivated the chinese public. just to remind you of our top story at this hour. law enforcement agencies around

the world have made hundreds of arrests in what has been called an unprecedented blow against organized crime. investigators used a messaging app that criminals thought was encrypted to spy on their communications as they plotted drug deals, armed shipments and murder. more world news at the top of the hour. in just a moment, i'll be back to guide you through the big stories of the day in "the day." so have a good day!