Police have arrested 17 people belonging to a network dedicated to bringing Nigerian women into Spain on board boats for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Most of the women were pregnant or had young babies which assured them of remaining in the Schengen area of the EU. Even inside detention centres the women were controlled by the network.
The investigation began last January at a shelter in Utrera, Sevilla, where it was noticed that about a dozen young Nigerian women maintained regular contact with a number of people outside the centre.
Painstaking research by the police led to the seventeen arrests, these taking place in Barcelona (2), Badalona (6), Santa Coloma de Gramenet (4), Castellón (2), Móstoles (2) and Alcalá de Henares (1). The detainees are 16 Nigerians and 1 Ugandan.
The organisation was not the usual pyramid structure but a group of people each with expertise in a different area of criminal activity from recruiting the women in Africa to the exercising of prostitution in Spain.
The women were often kept in line through threats and the use of voodoo rituals.