[ALBSA-Info] Sunday Mirror

[Agron Alibali]

Sunday Mirror 
January 6, 2002, Sunday 


LEADER; Pg. 14 


VOICE OF THE SUNDAY MIRROR: WE MUST END THIS EVIL CHILD SEX SLAVE TRADE 



IT'S like a story from the Dark Ages. The organised traffic in child prostitutes belongs to a long gone medieval past rather than the civilised Twenty First Century. Sadly, our investigation today reveals the sickening truth that the sale of child sex slaves in Britain is thriving. 

Schoolgirls as young as ten from Cuba, Nigeria and Albania can be bought by their owners for as little as 500. 

They are imprisoned in conditions that would make the workhouse seem like luxury. And they are forced to have sex with men for 70-a-time. 

It is big business, and growing all the time. One international report suggests up to 1,400 women and children are brought into Britain every year. 

And the sordid pimps who grow rich on the trade, like sick Aktham Zuhair Salem Madanat, who we expose today, are free to boast of the profits they make. 

The desperate plight of the youngsters is even sadder because many parents consent in the desperate hope that their children will find a better life. 

This cruel exploitation must be stamped out. And with it the corrupt framework of backhanders among authorities abroad who are quick to turn a blind eye. 

There must be tougher penalties for anyone connected with the child slave industry, from top to bottom. 

That means the forgers who provide the false passports as well as the pimps and handlers. And it should also include the parents who let their children be taken to a life of hell. 

Above all, the ringleaders must be shown that Britain will not tolerate their evil trade. 

========

Sunday Mirror 
January 6, 2002, Sunday 

NEWS; Pg. 8,9 


SUNDAY MIRROR INVESTIGATION: I SELL KIDS FOR SEX; 
 SICK TRAFFICKER OFFERING GIRLS OF 11 FOR 500 ..TO TURN INTO PROSTITUTES 

Graham Johnson And Nyra Mahmood 


FOR SALE: CAROLE, 11, CUBAN; Madanat's video of Carole, left, and friends. 'She's perfect,' he said; FOR SALE: SAIRA, 13, IRANIAN; 'She has the body of a woman,' said evil Aktham Madanat; WICKED: Madanat sells little girls to brothels to be turned into 1,000 a week hookers 




CHILD sex slaves can be bought in Britain for as little as 500, a Sunday Mirror investigation can reveal. One evil trafficker offered to sell our reporters two girls from Cuba - one aged just 11 - to be forced into prostitution. 

Aktham Zuhair Salem Madanat boasted: "The girls are barely out of puberty - 11,12, 13, 14 - but they have the bodies of older women. 

"Already by the time they are 10 or 11...the way Cuban girls move their bodies ...everything is for the pleasure of men. I can get them to London for about 500. They can earn that back in one week." Bogus asylum seeker Madanat said he charged 75 a day for his services in procuring the girls - and a percentage of their earnings as prostitutes. But he bragged that a single child prostitute could generate up to 1,000-a-week. 

We launched our investigation after one of Britain's top judges highlighted the horrific trade. Family Division Judge Peter Singer urged the Government to introduce new anti-trafficking laws to stop the flow of an estimated 1,400 women and children to the UK for prostitution every year. 

Schoolgirls as young as 10 from Cuba, Nigeria and Albania are being brought to Britain by traffickers to work as enslaved prostitutes. They are locked up in windowless brothels, beaten and plied with drugs while forced to have sex with men for 70-a-time. 

Their pimps split the profits with the traffickers and the slave girls get pocket-money, make-up and cheap clothes in return. The slaves are told they can earn their freedom - the return of their confiscated passports and the chance to stay in the UK - if they work for the period of bonded labour, normally two years. 

Sunday Mirror investigators were put on the trail of the child sex traffickers by a tip-off. We were told that prostitution rings operate out of the notorious London Park Hotel in the capital's Elephant and Castle district.The hotel houses 500 asylum seekers and refugees. 

Drugs, fake passports and stolen property are all openly for sale in the foyer from menacing gangs of Albanians and Arabs. One Albanian had hidden a 1ft-long kitchen knife underneath a sofa cushion for a pre-planned attack on a rival gang. The handle was covered in anti-fingerprint tape. 

An investigator posed as the owner of a hostess bar and brothel to infiltrate the sex slave gangs. He arrived at the hotel and waited in the foyer. Within 20 minutes he was approached TWICE by men offering to supply girls. 

The first, an Albanian called Alex, said he could provide Albanian and Polish prostitutes already working in Britain. The second, 38-year-old Madanat, described how he could bring girls into the UK from Cuba. 

Madanat claimed political asylum in Britain three months ago by pretending that he is an Iraqi national called Salem, forced to flee persecution by Saddam Hussein. Later he confessed his asylum claim was bogus. He is really a Jordanian national with no threat to his life. 

He has a house in his home town of Amman, a mansion and farm in Cuba and family businesses the US. Meanwhile British taxpayers are shelling out for the upkeep of his Cuban wife and four children, who he brought over from Havana, and are now all residents at the London Park Hotel claiming benefits. 

Madanat said: "I can bring over seven girls right now from Cuba.There are four aged between 16 and 21 or 22. And another who is 26 or 27. There are two young girls - one is 11. They are farm girls, very simple and easily controlled. They are desperate to get out of Cuba because of the poverty. 

"I have to give the girls' parents 200 dollars and then they are ours. That's a huge amount over there - six months wages. The parents know where their girls are going but they are desperate . 

"They hope the girls will send back money or meet a rich man and get married." 

Madanat said the girls were from his wife's home village, seven hours drive from Havana. 

He showed our investigators a home video of his daughter's birthday party in his house there, which was luxuriously decorated by Cuban standards and equipped with all mod cons. He told how had invited the local village girls to the party and shot the video. 

Now he was using the video to sell the girls into prostitution. 

The girls are playing, drinking pop and eating slices of two big birthday cakes. 

Little did they know, as they laughed and coyly shied away from the video camera, that 3,000 miles away in Britain the film would be used to sell them into a life of slavery. 

The child prostitutes travel to Britain using false names and documents supplied by Madanat. 

They are accompanied on the journey by an older woman travelling on a work visa who pretends the girls are her children. 

Madanat said: "If you are not happy with the girls in the video, I will take you to Cuba and you can pick your own. You can try them out before you buy. 

"The youngest I've had is 13. I picked her up on the side of the road. I will take you to a school where they will flock around your car." 

He added: "I will arrange the paperwork and the visas. I have a lawyer in Havana who does that. It costs about 100 dollars. 

"The British visas are no problem. It's the Cuban exit visas which are difficult to get, especially for the young girls. The Cuban authorities know what's going on and they try to stop it. Lots of young girls are taken to the US every month for pimps. Since that custody battle over the Cuban kid in Miami they've tightened up even more and been stalling over every kid who leaves. 

"I can get fake ID papers and get a family passport or travel documents which say they are the daughters or sisters of one of the older girls.That's the only way to get an exit visa for a child. 

"All the older girls can come over on working visas. The Cuban Embassy in London need a Letter of Invitation from a business saying they will work as a dance troupe or in a restaurant. I can even get long-stay working visas for that." 

Madanat told how he was currently arranging for a group of girls from Cuba to come to London to work in a hostess bar in the West End. 

He said: "It's a restaurant at the moment but the owner wants some girls in there dancing for the men. I want to put some into flats and get them working. Everything is arranged - the paperwork, the flights, the visas. I'm just waiting for the 'Yes' from the owner." 

He added: "My fees are not high. I want 75 for every day I work before and after the girls arrive. When the girls work I want a percentage of what they earn." He said our investigator should find flats for them to live in but he would keep them in line, explaining: "If the girls give me trouble I hurt them." 

Madanat reached inside his black leather jacket and showed our investigator a flick-knife with a 6in blade. He said: "I am not afraid to use violence to keep them in line. But I don't sleep with them. The minute you sleep with one of your girls you lose respect. They start thinking they've got one over you and can use it to manipulate you. 

"I do them a bit of coke - amphetamines and Es are better and cheaper - but none during working hours, only for them to relax, to keep them happy." 

He added: "There is a 13-year old Iranian girl in England now. There are also other teenage girls in my hotel and another hostel. They will do anything for money. But they are being watched by Social Services and there is always someone else to pay." 

Madanat, a former pimp in Miami, said he has lived in Britain "on and off" for nine years. "I worked as a personal trainer at a gym in Notting Hill and then in a barber's shop. That's how I got into selling cocaine. I earned a lot of money from that. Nine months ago I got into trouble and had to go back to Cuba. Now I'm here again to make more money." 

Madanat had nine Cuban visa stamps in his passport - and had travelled there 13 times in all. He also had visas from 24 other countries. 

A Home Office spokeswoman said last night: "The Government regard the commercial exploitation of children for sex as an abhorrent crime. We are committed to putting effective measures in place to stop it and penalising those responsible."" 

We have made our file on Madanat available to police. 

JUDGE URGES CRACKDOWN 

SENIOR judge Peter Singer has called for the flow of the sex slaves into the UK to be halted. 

The High Court judge said women and children illegally brought into the country were forced into prostitution for an "indefinite term". 

He added: "Their most minimal rights as human beings are systematically abused while their employers amass rewards." 

The International Labour Organisation estimates that up to 6,000 women and children are brought to the UK, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands for prostitution each year.


---------------------------------
Do You Yahoo!?
Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail.
-------------- next part --------------
HTML attachment scrubbed and removed