07/08/2023 and las 14:36 CEST
The National Police frees 11 victims of a network that brought them from Colombia and sexually exploited them to charge them 5,000 euros for the trip
The National Police have arrested 10 people in the Alicante towns of Denia and Gata de Gorgos and in the provincial capital by dismantling a criminal organization dedicated to the sexual exploitation of women that they recruited in Colombia and they contracted a debt of 5,000 euros for the trip from their country of origin. In the operation they have been 11 women freed between the ages of 19 and 37 who were being prostituted by the group in two apartments in Dénia and Benidorm.
Those arrested, six of them defended by the lawyer Aitor Esteban Gallastegui, They are released after going to court, two of them on bail. The Police accuse them of belonging to a criminal organization, human trafficking, prostitution, against public health, money laundering and facilitating irregular immigration. They are between 18 and 65 years old and are of Colombian, Argentine and Spanish nationality.
The police investigation of agents of the Unit against Immigration Networks and Documentary Falsehoods (UCRIF) of Alicante and Dénia It has lasted for eight months due to its complexity and the number of people involved in the criminal organization. The investigations were launched in November 2022 when some of the victims managed to flee the home where they were sexually exploited and “find themselves terrified” they asked for help calling the Free hotline for victims of trafficking or sexual exploitation (900 10 50 90).
The National Police activated the protocol for these cases and the social interlocutor against trafficking in human beings traveled from Alicante to the municipality of Denia, where the victims were. The Police provided them with help and began a complex investigation in which several victims testified as protected witnesses.
The investigators found out that the women were recruited in Colombia and after being transferred to Spain they acquired a debt with the criminal organization of 5,000 euros that they had to settle through sexual exploitation by the network.
The members of the organization charged them abusive amounts of money both for the rent -100 euros a day- and for the clothes and other daily necessities that these women used to practice prostitution in apartments in Dénia mostly, although later they were also doing it in a house in Benidorm.
The criminal organization advertised on different contact web pages the sexual services they offered to be hired and the sexually exploited women, who also paid 65 euros a week for said advertisements, were transferred from one floor to another periodically.
24 hours available
The women had to be available 24 hours a day and were watched by video surveillance cameras and continuously intimidated, “there being cases in which they were forced to provide sexual services without prophylactic protectionsarriving the leader of the organization to exert violence on one of these victims”, affirms the Police.
The victims claim that they were in cramped conditions because they shared rooms and had to leave them when one of them had to provide a sexual service.
Each member of the criminal group had a specific role and the tasks of recruiting, contracting flights, transfers, surveillance, collections, renting apartments and accounting were distributed.
The UCRIF agents proceeded to the exploitation phase of the operation at the end of last May, once all the members of this organization had been identified. The researchers conducted three entries and searches at addresses in Benidorm, Dénia and Gata de Gorgos, in which eleven victims of the criminal organization were released and seized more than 12,000 euros, 830 grams of marijuana, several surveillance cameras and a high-end vehicle. In Gata de Gorgos resided the alleged ringleader of the network and others involved.
2023-08-07 12:54:38
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