Subject: [Stop-traffic] News/Sweden: Trafficking in high court
From: Ulrikke Moustgaard (ulrikke_moustgaard@information.dk)
Date: Mon Oct 30 2000 - 13:26:12 EST
20Sep2000 SWEDEN: Stockholm high court begins
proceedings in sex trade case.
STOCKHOLM, Sept 20 (CTK) - The Stockholm high court today began
proceedings in the appeal of four members of a gang trafficking women
who were recently sentenced by a lower level Swedish court.
The court found them guilty of luring women to Sweden from the Czech
Republic and Slovakia and forcing them into prostitution and sentenced
them to between two and five years in prison. As the four defendants,
three men and one woman from the former Yugoslavia, appealed before
the legally set deadline, the verdict has not taken effect.
The daily Dagens Nyheter wrote today that the case involved 13 women
from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria. The women were
tricked, imprisoned and forced into prostitution. Most of them were
between 17 and 25 years of age and were sold in Stockholm, in
Copenhagen, Denmark, Oslo, Norway and Brussels, Belgium.
"Much more women were harmed but we have failed to contact them,"
State Attorney Nils-Eric Schultz said opening the court proceedings.
Schultz said that the women harmed were poor and unemployed and
some of them were sold by their relatives.
Only one of the four members of the gang admitted his involvement in a
single case of trafficking women, while the other emphatically rejected
the accusation.
According to information provided by the high court to CTK, the appeal
proceedings are to last until October 20.
Swedish police reportedly had been monitoring the gang which allegedly
had its headquarters in an immigration facility in south Stockholm from
the autumn of 1998 until the moment when one of the young women
whom the gang had lured to Sweden, a 17-year-old Czech, managed to
escape from the place where she was held and telephoned her mother in
the Czech Republic. She told her mother that she had been forced into
prostitution, and her mother immediately contacted the consular section
of
the Czech Embassy in Stockholm. The embassy then promptly informed
Swedish police, who then intervened and managed to break up the entire
gang last year. The case was first disclosed in Sweden last October.
19Sep2000 SWEDEN: Gang suspected of trafficking
Czech, Slovak women goes to court.
STOCKHOLM, Sept 19 (CTK) - Sweden's largest ever case of sex
trafficking of foreign women will on Wednesday again be taken up by a
Stockholm court following earlier appeals by the defendants, a
four-member gang charged with luring women to Sweden from the
Czech Republic and Slovakia and forcing them into prostitution.
The four defendants, three men and one woman all from the Balkans, are
again facing the charges. The gang was discovered last year.
The four defendants were already convicted earlier this year and given
sentences ranging from between two and five years for counts of
organising prostitution, rape, blackmail and sexual abuse.
Swedish police reportedly had been monitoring the gang which allegedly
had its headquarters in an immigration facility in south Stockholm from
the autumn of 1998 until the moment when one of the young women
whom the gang had lured to Sweden, a 17-year-old Czech, managed to
escape from a detention centre and telephoned her mother in the Czech
Republic. She told her mother that she had been forced into
prostitution,
and her mother immediately contacted the consular section of the Czech
Embassy in Stockholm. The embassy then promptly informed Swedish
police, who then intervened and managed to break up the entire gang last
year. In October of last year, the case was first disclosed in Sweden.
Czech consul in Stockholm Viera Jaresova told CTK that she believed the
case was the first such ever and that, according to her information, it
was
not common for women from the Czech Republic and Slovakia to be
lured to Sweden and abused.
The Swedish mass-circulation daily Metro quoted the Czech and Slovak
women as saying that although each made about 40,000 Swedish crowns
(around 170,000 Czech crowns), they were forced to hand most of it over
to members of the gang.
During the police investigation and in court so far, testimony was given
by around two dozen women between the ages of 17 and 30.
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