Police crack major sex trade operation

KATHY TZILIVAKIS

A TOTAL of 200 police officers in Athens and Thessaloniki raided 15 homes and businesses last week in one of the country's biggest ever crackdowns against human trafficking of women and girls for the sex trade industry.

Nine (seven men and two women) alleged ringleaders, were arrested in the operation, which was coordinated by the international police organisations Interpol and Europol. Another 23 suspects (15 Greeks, four Russians, three Germans and one Turkish national) were also arrested.

They reportedly smuggled unsuspecting women from Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Romania and Moldova, promising them jobs in Greece as waitresses. Once in Greece, the women were reportedly locked up in makeshift prison cells.

The illegal smuggling network reportedly bribed lawyers to process forged residence permit applications before forcing the women to work at 10 brothels in Athens, four in Thessaloniki, two in Germany and one in Austria.

The skin trade industry is a money-spinning "business", digging up the third largest source of profits worldwide after the illicit sale of drugs and guns. The smugglers in Athens and Thessaloniki were reportedly making an estimated 2,000 euros a day.

In other related news, police in Athens arrested a retired Greek police officer and his Russian wife who allegedly ran a sex trafficking ring between the two countries. The Russian spouse reportedly used her friends and family in Russia to assist them in luring women and teenage girls to Greece under false pretences. Once in the country, the victims were reportedly locked up in an apartment in the Athens suburb of Ilioupoli, where they stayed during the day. At night, they were forced to prostitute themselves at a bar.

The majority of women trafficked to Greece for sexual exploitation are from former Eastern bloc countries. Many are brought here from Moldova, Europe's poorest country.

Women and young girls are lured to Greece under false pretences of a better life, a job as a waitress or a maid. They are stripped of their passports and held in debt bondage by their traffickers. They are sold and resold like cattle to brothel owners.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimates that 120,000 women and girls are trafficked into western Europe annually and forced into prostitution or other forms of sexual servitude.

Greece faces mounting international criticism for failing to protect the victims. According to Amnesty International, the London-based global human rights watchdog, migrant women and girls sold for thousands of euros each in Greece's lucrative skin trade industry receive little or no protection. The group reported earlier this year that human trafficking for forced prostitution in Greece has increased ten-fold in the last decade.

According to Amnesty International's report, published in June, the threat of deportation and the conditionality of protection are the two biggest drawbacks of Greece's policy towards trafficking victims.

ATHENS NEWS , 07/12/2007, page: A09
Article code: C13264A092