4 Nigerian women freed from being kept as sex slaves in brothels
Four Nigerian women were rescued from 'voodoo' death threats after six
people were arrested by Spanish police on suspicion of keeping the
frightened victims as sex slaves.
According to investigators, the trafficking ring prostituted women in
Lanzarote in the Canary Islands and other parts of Spain after luring
them from their families in Nigeria. They are accused of binding them to
an oath to pay back money for the passage to Spain and casting
voodoo-type spells to guarantee their obedience.
The women were recruited from poor families in Nigeria and told they
would get regular employment in Spain. They were then made to swear
oaths that they would work off a debt to the gang of up to €50,000
(£37,000) before they could gain their freedom.
A kind of juju voodoo ritual was then performed, the police said, in
which an animal would be sacrificed and something from the women's
bodies, nail clippings or pubic hair, kept by their new masters.
The women believed that they and family members would be killed if they
did not cooperate with the 'madames' who ran the brothels they ended up
in, according to the police version of the gang's modus operandi.
The women were brought to Spain overland through Niger and Algeria to
Morocco, where they joined other African immigrants attempting to reach
the Canary Islands by boat.
The police said they could
not give more specific information on the identities of the six suspects
while a judge in Lanzarote oversees a full investigation. Court
authorities believed that the criminal gang sought to use under age
girls as prostitutes but none of the four women freed from their virtual
captivity by the police was believed to be under 18.
The investigation began in February when police in Lanzarote started to
suspect that a woman had been the victim of illegal trafficking.
Officers then uncovered what they believe was a sex-slavery ring run by
Nigerian citizens. Spain's National Police said that prior to this case,
between April 2013 and December 2014, they carried out 462
investigations into sex trafficking, leading to 1,450 arrests and the
detection of 11,751 possible victims.
Prostitution is
not illegal in Spain, but abusive pimping and soliciting in public
places are penalised. There are 1,400 identifiable brothels in Spain,
not counting clandestine apartments or other places where sex can be
bought, police said.
Source:
Telegraph UK
