A regional court in the German city of Trier on Monday handed out prison sentences to eight individuals for running a "darknet" web hub.

The facility's servers enabled online trading involving drugs, contract killings, money laundering, and images of child abuse.

The group had been charged with aiding and abetting criminals in some 249,000 transactions from servers in a former NATO bunker in Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate state.

The trial of the defendants — seven men and one woman — has lasted a year.

What did the court decide?

The court sentenced the main defendant, a 62-year-old Dutchman, to five years and six months in jail.

Six defendants were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two years and four months for one senior member to four years and three months for the son of the ringleader. An eighth received a one-year suspended sentence.

The defendants' names were not revealed.

Presiding Judge Günther Köhler said the taking of evidence had revealed that the gang was running a "bulletproof hoster," which claimed to offer a data center that was safe from investigative authorities.

Why is the trial significant?

The verdict brings to an end one of the nationwide largest trials against cybercrime.

The focus, for the first time, was not on perpetrators who use the darknet to sell illegal goods and services,but those who make such trade possible as web hosters.

The powerful underground servers in a small tourist village on the banks of Germany's Mosel River were shut down after a September 2019 raid that followed a 5-year investigation.

The equipment was used to operate darknet networks such as "Wall Street Market" and "Fraudsters."

Illegal websites hosted by the facility also sold stolen data and forged documents, and was used to carry out large-scale cyberattacks.

Hundreds of law enforcement personnel including the GSG 9, Germany's elite federal police unit, were involved in the September 2019 operation to raid the facility.

Police officers succeeded in penetrating the building, a 5,000-square-meter (almost 54,000 square-feet) former NATO bunker with iron doors, which went five floors deep underground.

The building was located on a 1.3-hectare (3.2-acre) property secured with a fence and surveillance cameras.

rc/wmr (dpa, AFP)