[ALBSA-Info] ANSA

[Agron Alibali]

Italian police smash Italo-Albanian prostitution racket 

ANSA news agency web site, Rome, in English 1325 gmt 14 Mar 02 




Text of report in English by Italian news agency ANSA web site 

Catania Sicily , 14 March: Almost 30 Albanian and Sicilian mafiosi have been arrested on charges of running a vast prostitution and drug racket between Albania and Italy, police said today. 

In the overnight operation involving 200 policemen and six different regions, 29 people were arrested, most of them Albanians, and charged with forcing women into prostitution, drug and immigrant trafficking, and possession of weapons. The operation was co-ordinated by anti-Mafia prosecutors in Catania and arrests were carried out in the southern regions of Sicily and Campania and the central and northern regions of Lazio, Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy. Catania prosecutors said the leaders of the organization were based in Albania and had tricked numerous young Albanian women into coming to Italy with the offer of legal work. 

Once here, the girls, many of them still minors, were forced into prostitution and treated like sex slaves, prosecutors said. 

One girl, who was picked up by police in Ragusa during a crackdown on street prostitution, helped launch the operation by recounting her tragic experiences to the prosecutors. The girl told them she had been brought to Bari two years ago when she was just 15 by her boyfriend, who immediately handed her over to a group of Albanian bosses. She said she was forced to prostitute herself in various southern regions and was "sold" on several occasions for 5,000 euros to various members of the same gang. She said she tried to escape once in Ragusa but was immediately caught by her captors and savagely beaten. 

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