Subject: [Stop-traffic] News/Italy: Italy Arrests Dozens of Albanians in Prostitution Ring
From: Melanie Orhant (morhant@igc.org)
Date: Mon Sep 18 2000 - 11:04:25 EDT
Source: Albanian Daily News
June 21, 2000
Italy Arrests Dozens of Albanians in Prostitution Ring
TIRANA - An Italian senior prosecutor said here on Tuesday that the police
forces should join forces to fight Albanian-Italian
criminal networks.
Prosecutor General Pier Luigi Vigna warned that Albanian
criminals in Italy
were growing stronger from their alliance with the local
mafia.
The Italian police arrested late Monday and early on
Tuesday 69 Albanians
involved in a prostitution ring in central and south
Italy. The criminal
organization dealt mainly with prostitution, but it also
controlled the distribution
of drugs in Italy's southern coast, Italian prosecutors
said.
Young Albanian girls were lured into Italy through
promises of good jobs and
then forced to prostitution. The girls were threatened
with physical violence or
warned that their relatives in Albania would be "punished
if they didn't
cooperate," prosecutors said.
The Italian police operation, code named Mimozat - the
Albanian word for
mimosa - involved 600 policemen and 150 vehicles in four
regions in central
and south Italy: Lazio, Campania, Apuglia, and Sicily.
The Italian interior minister Enzo Bianco hailed the
first "effective police
response" to the prostitution racket.
"This was an important operation, a blow at the heart of
the organisations that
deal with the slave-trade of girls forced into
prostitution," Bianco said on
Tuesday. "This is also the first effective by the police
response to my order to
fight back against this criminal activity."
The minister pledged "a determined fight" against
prostitution networks, and
said that other similar operations will follow. The
police also arrested on
Monday in a separate operation four in prostitution
network in Naples, two
Albanians, one Bulgarian woman and an Italian man. The
police detained six
prostitutes, coming from Albania, Romania, and Bulgaria.
Vigna met with Albanian top officials and urged their
cooperation in the fight
against illegal traffics. President Rexhep Meidani met
with Vigna and proposed
that a team of Italian investigators be established near
the Attorney General
office to share information on Albanian criminals
operating in Italy and
vice-versa.
Melanie Orhant
Stop-Traffic Moderator
Please contact me off-list for any questions about Stop-Traffic at
<<morhant@igc.org>>.
Women's Reproductive Health Initiative
Program for Appropriate Technology in Health
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dealing with human rights abuses associated with trafficking
in persons, with an emphasis on public health and trafficking
in persons for forced labor, including forced prostitution,
sweatshop labor, domestic service and some coercive mail
order bride arrangements.
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