Spanish Police Smash Edo State Voodoo PróstitutionGang

Spanish police said Sunday [Jun 2] they had broken up a
ring that smuggled in women from Nigeria and forced them
into street próstitution by burning them with irons and using
voodoo rituals.
Police arrested six Nigerian nationals, including the suspected
woman ringleader, as part of an investigation launched last
year after one of the próstitutes filed a complaint with the
authorities.
"The control exercised over women was total, involving verbal
threats as well as physical violence and various voodoo
ceremonies to terrorize them," police said in a statement. "The
ring caused them serious injury through bites or by using an
iron to cause second-degree burns."
The ring recruited women in Benin City, a run-down
Nigerian port, whose husbands and fathers had died and who
were struggling to raise their children.
They transported the women overland to Morocco and then
smuggled them on small wooden boats into Spain where they
are forced to work as street próstitutes in Barcelona and
Malaga.
Spanish police have swooped several times in past years on
similar próstitution rings that used the threat of voodoo curses to
frighten their victims into obedience.
Before leaving Nigeria, the rings often take their victims to
shrines where they swear to pay their debts to the group and
not to denounce them to the police.
The women leave fingernails, hair, underwear and other
personal items at the shrines which they are told will give voodoo
priests the power to harm them wherever they are in the world.
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