Nadia McDonald
The Provincial Court of Malaga will try four people for allegedly forcing Nigerian women into prostitution. The defendants, two men and two women, practised voodoo rituals on them and threatened to harm their relatives.
The trial will take place on April 18 with possible sentences ranging from 67 years to nine months in jail.
They are accused of crimes related to human trafficking and money laundering. According to the indictment the four people worked with residents in Nigeria to provide the necessary documentation and resources for the women to travel to Spain where they were then sexually exploited.
Money made by the forced prostitution of the victims was carried in cash back to Nigeria. In a six year window one of the accused made 118 plane trips back to his home country.
Another defendant would help the victims obtain asylum, telling one of the women to claim to the authorities that she had been threatened by terrorist group Boko Haram.
Multiple women were approached by the defendants with a promise of a lucrative income from working in prostitution in Spain, and that they would eventually help them to find another job.
Voodoo rituals were also performed on the women’s relatives as a means of threatening them as well as claiming that the victims had racked up large debts that could only be paid back through engaging in prostitution.
One of the victims is understood to have travelled from the African continent by boat, eventually arriving in Malaga at which point she was forced to work as a prostitute out of a nightclub in Torremolinos. She would worked seven days a week for 10 hours per day with all of her earnings taken off her, the situation lasted for almost a year.
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