Three Nigerians Arrested In Spain For Forcing Mothers Into Prostitution

Spanish police said Thursday they have
arrested three Nigerians who forced
African women into prostitution in
Europe, including by holding two
women’s children captive for at least
four months.
Five women in different Spanish cities
were freed from the clutches of the
gang after a long operation that began
at the beginning of the year, on the
basis of information from a young
African prostitute, a police statement
said.
In August, police rescued two little
children, one of them aged three, from
an address in Valmojado, some 50
kilometres (30 miles) from Madrid.
They were found in poor health and
malnourished.
“They were kept locked in separate
rooms… at times gagged and tied to the
bed” by captors who fed them
tranquilisers to keep them docile, the
statement said.
“The children were to guarantee that
the women paid off their ‘debts’ by
going into prostitution and to stop them
running away.”
The mothers were eventually found in
France, where they were forced to work
as prostitutes.
The criminal gang holding them used
that and other strategies to bring
Nigerian women to Spain and force
them to work as prostitutes, the police
said.
The women were “enticed with
fraudulent promises, with false job
offers or by abusing their precarious
situation”. They were smuggled to Spain
by boat from Morocco.
Once in Spain, they were sold to pimps
in EU countries, the statement said.