Awarded Best
ISSUE NO. 1708
29 March - 4 April 2018
Newspaper in Spain 2018
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Sex slave arrests Suspects from Alicante and the UK held ARRESTS have been made in Alicante Province, across Spain and in Britain, in connection with an international human trafficking ring allegedly responsible for forcing Nigerian women into prostitution. Guardia Civil officers collaborated with Britain’s National Crime Agency and Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of People Trafficking for the operation which saw 89 people arrested. A total of 58 of those have been charged with organised crime, human trafficking and money laundering offences. Forty three of these have been remanded in custody. A woman was also arrested in Middleton, Greater Manchester, on suspicion of being a ‘madame’ in the group which is known as Eiye Confraternity. The operation also saw 39 women, allegedly trafficked from Africa and across Europe to Spain, freed from ‘cave houses’ in Cuevas del Almanzora in Almeria. Police said the women were found to be living in ‘extremely’ unstable conditions. A total
Credit: Guardia Civil
by Joe Gerrard
ARRESTS: A total of 89 were detained in the operation which spanned Spain and Britain. of 18 of the alleged victims reported ‘voodoo’ rites were used in their home country of Nigeria to force them into the sex trafficking ring. The investigation began in Torrevieja, Alicante, after officers received a complaint from
one of the alleged victims, a girl reportedly underage. The girl claimed she had been captured in Nigeria and subjected to voodoo-juju rites before being trafficked to Spain via the Libya to Italy migration route.
The complaint resulted in an investigation which led to arrests in January, with information on the operation withheld until last week for security reasons.
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Mother and son beaten to death A WOMAN and her 26-year-old son have been found dead in their home in Las Torres de Cotillas in Murcia. Guardia Civil officers have since opened an investigation into the death. Police said the older brother who discovered the bodies was visibly upset and that his hands were covered
in blood when they arrived at the single-terraced family house at around 6.50am. A court ordered the removal of the bodies which showed clear signs of having being hit with a blunt object, the Guardia Civil said in a statement. The implement used has not been found, they added.
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