A court in Bulgaria has upheld a european arrest warrant issued by a judge in Belgium for Romanian citizen Bankutsa Dechebal who is accused of human trafficking and assisting in the laundering of money made by trafficking rings. Dechebel has now agreed to voluntarily go to Belgium to undergo trial. With the growing sophistication of human trafficking rings across Europe, this kind of coordinated international action against the laundering of the profits of this activity is very important. Worldwide, people trafficking is second only to the arms trade in the amount of profit it generates for organized crime. To read more about this and related subjects, please visit
http://www.sofiaecho.com/article/black-sea-briefs/id_23758/catid_5

The Department Against Trafficking in People and Prosecution of Organised Crime of the Attica police on Monday said it had succeeded in dismantling one of the largest and best organised rings in the people-trafficking and sex trade after a two-month investigation that culminated in a huge police operation on Sunday.

Police carried out simultaneous raids on 34 different locations in Athens that were supervised by Appeals Public Prosecutor Dimitris Papangelopoulos and the head of Athens First-Instance Court public prosecutors’ Panagiotis Poulios.
A total of 152 people were detained for questioning during Sunday’s raids, while those placed under arrest are to appear before a public prosecutor on Monday.

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Every child entering the UK should have their biometrics taken in an attempt to stop the trafficking of children for sex, domestic slavery, street crime and drug smuggling.

The plan to track children after they enter the UK comes in a Home Office-sponsored study, which admits that human trafficking is now a “real and significant threat” to the country.

Children were being forced to work in cannabis factories, beg on the streets, turned into domestic “slaves” and drawn into the sex trade and benefit fraud, the report says. “The exercise has shown that child trafficking is a nationwide concern as it affects almost all parts of the United Kingdom.”

A total of 330 cases of suspected or confirmed child victims of traffickers were identified, with most coming from China and Africa. The top five source countries for children brought to the UK were China, Nigeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Eritrea.

The study gives warning that in light of increased controls at Heathrow, Gatwick and Dover, the traffickers are switching to smaller entry points such as Glasgow, Belfast, Doncaster and Stansted airports and at ports in Hull and Gravesend.

The report also said that the UK may be being used by traffickers as a transit country and that there is some evidence of the enforced movement of children around the UK. It also expresses alarm over the safety of trafficked children who are placed in the care of local authorities, with over half of those in the study simply disappearing.

To continue reading this article please visit: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2045642.ece

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Three men were being held in Las Vegas on slavery charges, accused of detaining members of a Chinese acrobat team against their will.

The arrests of You Zhi Li, 38, Yang Shen, 21, and Jun Hu, 43, this week came after one woman who worked as an interpreter for China Star Acrobats escaped late last month and contacted authorities, the FBI said.

The woman told police she and 20 other teammates were, in effect, slaves being held against their will in a southwest Las Vegas home.

Other members of the troupe then told authorities that they were fed little, paid next to nothing, and their lives were completely controlled by three Chinese men.

Source: http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2007/jul/04/070410051.html

Warsaw - Nine Poles and one Ukrainian are facing criminal charges after Polish border guards busted a sex slave gang attempting to sell Polish women to brothels in Germany and Switzerland, the PAP news agency reported Thursday. The gang was exposed when three Polish women it recruited on false information to work in Switzerland managed to escape before being enslaved in a Swiss brothel.

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