Simon Hunter
SPAIN’S National Police on Friday arrested 10 members of a suspected pimping gang that forced 16 women into prostitution in Sevilla and Cadiz provinces.
The gang is suspected of recruiting the women from other countries before bringing them into Spain, where they were forced to sell their bodies 24 hours a day, seven days a week, according to Spanish daily Publico.
The police operation against the gang also turned up a large quantity of drugs, which were being sold from the brothels where the women were located in Utrera (Seville) and Rota (Cadiz).
The authorities seized two marijuana plantations with more than a thousand plants, two drug laboratories, 600 grammes of a designer drug known as TUSI and 800 grammes of MDMA. They also found an AK-47-style machine gun, €24,000 in cash and several luxury vehicles.
The 10 suspects will now face charges of human trafficking for sexual exploitation, drug trafficking, offences against the rights of foreign citizens, illegal arms possession and belonging to a criminal organisation.
The gang is suspected to have forced the women into working around the clock and to consume narcotics, while they only kept 25% of their income from prostitution. The rest went to the bosses or to pay off the ‘debt’ they were told they had acquired for their passage to Spain.
Read more:
- Woman freed after being forced into prostitution for six years on Spain’s Costa Blanca
- Young man, 26, ‘is raped by a group of eight men’ in a park in Spain’s Madrid
- Blackmailers extort vast sums of money from men wanting sex in Spain
