German court begins trial of 'White Tiger' online predator

German juvenile court began trial Friday of a man accused of driving a 13-year-old to suicide and coercing dozens of children as part of an international online predator network known as "764".

The 21-year-old German-Iranian defendant, identified only as Shahriar J under German privacy rules, was attacked Thursday by other detainees shouting "White Tiger" while being transferred to Hamburg court, his lawyer Christiane Yueksel said.

Shahriar J is accused of driving a 13-year-old transgender youth living near Seattle to suicide in January 2022, which the victim live-streamed.

The accused allegedly operated from his parents' home in a wealthy Hamburg suburb using the pseudonym "White Tiger".

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has labelled "764" an international child exploitation enterprise and a "network of nihilistic violent extremists".

The group is named after the Texas zip code of its founder, a teenager arrested and jailed in 2023, according to reports.

Targeting vulnerable children

Prosecutors allege Shahriar J victimised more than 30 children in hundreds of cases from January 2021, when he was 16 years old. He is being tried in juvenile court in closed proceedings because he was a minor at the time.

Users of the "764" forum shared ultra-violent content and child sexual abuse material, and exchanged tips on luring victims into producing sexually explicit material before using it for blackmail, according to court documents.

The user called "White Tiger" allegedly found vulnerable children in online chats or gaming forums, developed relationships to groom them, then encouraged them to produce pornographic content used for coercion and extortion.

Prosecutors have levelled 204 criminal charges including one of murder and five of attempted murder. Court spokeswoman Marayke Frantzen said if convicted, Shahriar J could face six months to 10 years in a young offenders' institution.

Yueksel said the charges were "experimental" and "not provable".

The suspect was arrested in a police raid on his parents' home on 17 June 2025 and has been held in pre-trial detention since. Authorities said they had identified eight victims aged between 11 and 15 from the UK, Canada, Germany and the US.

The case has raised questions about whether German authorities should have acted sooner.

Weekly newspaper Die Zeit reported that the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children alerted German authorities in 2021 to a Hamburg-based predator called "White Tiger".

Police reportedly questioned the suspect at the time but dropped the case after he admitted possessing pornographic material involving minors.

An FBI investigator told Der Spiegel magazine he had shared the identity of "White Tiger" with German law enforcement in February 2023, more than two years before the arrest.

Hamburg authorities blamed the delay on the time-consuming task of searching through "large number of data storage devices" seized and the fact that victims and other perpetrators "mostly live abroad and have sometimes concealed their identities".

The Hamburg regional court has scheduled an initial 82 days of hearings until 17 December 2026. Other investigations against the same network are ongoing, Frantzen said, adding the current trial "could serve as a precedent".