Police set up human trafficking unit Thursday, 08 March 2007 02:46

london • Police launched a special unit to target the growing menace of human trafficking in the capital yesterday, vowing to smash foreign criminal gangs that sell their victims into the sex trade or use them as forced labour. london • Police launched a special unit to target the growing menace of human trafficking in the capital yesterday, vowing to smash foreign criminal gangs that sell their victims into the sex trade or use them as forced labour.
Many young women smuggled illegally into the UK end up working as prostitutes while other migrants are forced to work for little or no pay.
Some victims, who arrive penniless and unable to speak English, have been found to be as young as 14.
Citing an extreme case, police said that hours after being sold at the airport a young woman was raped by her new owners and then held in appalling conditions at different locations where she was repeatedly gang-raped.
“They (the victims) have a really torrid time of it: they are duped and coerced into coming to the UK with promises of a better life, a good job or marriage,” Metropolitan Police Commander Sue Wilkinson told reporters.
“But instead, they find that they’ve placed themselves into the hands of these ruthless networks ... either in a situation of forced labour or sex trade and have no idea how to get help.”
Wilkinson, who has overall responsibility for the 11-strong London-focused unit, said the trade was a “hugely lucrative business”.
Criminal gangs typically charged their victims large fees for bringing them into the country and then continued to exploit them, sometimes for years afterwards.
“There is a massive amount of money to be made. It is laundered back to the source country ... and we will also launch a financial investigation to chase the money and dismantle these networks,” she said.
Two operations were under way already, she added.
Wilkinson would not be drawn on the number of women and men being trafficked into Britain, but said it was “clearly a major problem”.
She also said the scourge was now of global proportions, with gangs and victims identified from Asia, Africa and South America as well as the historically well-known source countries in eastern Europe and the Baltics.
The Lithuanian government considers Britain to be its number one destination for people trafficking, for example. “We are now seeing people being trafficked in from a wide variety of African countries and from South America, so it is a huge remit across the world,” Wilkinson said.

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