White slavers network dismantled in Arges. Five victims found chained during searches

40 searches are being conducted in Berevoiesti, Arges county, with prosecutors eyeing a network of white slavers.

The Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) says that starting 2008, several criminal groups have been set up, which have recruited about 40 minors and grown ups by constraint, misleading, kidnapping or by simply taking advantage of their vulnerable situations (they were either minors, disabled persons or extremely poor people). The traffickers used to exploit them, force them to make various works, make them beg. The victims were deprived of their freedom.

At least five of the victims have been found in chains during searches on Wednesday. Two of them were children aged 10 to 12. Organized crime prosecutors also found RON 228,000 at the traffickers’ places, almost one kilo of gold jewelry, nine sawing machines and three utility vehicles.

In some cases, the victims were kidnapped from public locations (near churches, railway stations or bus stations) or even from their own places, they were subsequently taken to the traffickers’ houses where they were forced to carry out various works and activities in their households or other ones.

The victims had to sweep in the courtyards, to do the laundry, to take care the domestic animals, to illegally cut down trees from the nearby forests and to transport the woods back home, where they were loaded in the traffickers’ utility cars and transported in the southern Romania (mainly in Giurgiu, Teleorman, Olt and Dolj counties).

The victims were threatened and fisted, or beaten with the whip or other blunt objects. The victims were permanently watched by the members of the group, they were practically deprived of their freedom.

Prosecutors also say that the victims were also starved and when they did get some food there were left-overs. They were also locked up in cages and chained so that they could not run away.

Some victims were victims humiliating treatments; they were completely stripped of their clothes and wetted alternatively with cold and hot water. They had their hands and legs all tied up and they were forced to eat on the ground. The victims were also forced to fight to the suspects’ amusement. There are also suspicions that some of the victims had been raped or sexually abused.

Prosecutors started criminal prosecution against 40 people in this case.