Spanish police have rescued 15 women and men from violence by a gang who are said to have forced their victims into prostitution. A total of 14 suspected members of the gang, including their leader, were arrested in a large-scale operation in the autonomous community of Murcia on the Mediterranean coast in the south-east of the country, the police said on Twitter today.
Most of the victims were from Colombia. Among them were four sisters of the leader. Like the other victims, he persuaded her to escape the economic hardship in Colombia and get a lucrative job in Spain.
But there they were forced into prostitution to pay for the flight from South America. The victims were freed in apartments and houses in the towns of Molina de Segura and Cabezo de Torres, north of the regional capital Murcia, radio station Onda Cero reported.
Cash and drugs seized
A video showed police seizing cash and small amounts of drugs. The victims were taken to a minibus and the alleged perpetrators were handcuffed.
Internationally operating criminal gangs usually lure forced prostitutes to Spain with false promises of work. Many are in the country illegally, the perpetrators often take their passports from them and, in this dependency, force them to buy them in order to pay off the cost of their flight to Europe.
