Dubai: Gang of six jailed for forcing 16-year-old orphan into prostitution

Dubai - The victim came to the country, thinking she would work as a maid, court records show.

Six Asians were sentenced to jail terms of up to 10 years in Dubai for illegally bringing in a 16-year-old orphan girl and forcing her into prostitution.

Three of them shall be imprisoned for 10 years on charges of human trafficking, forging documents and abusing a minor, the Dubai Court of Appeals of ruled. Another man and a woman were handed a seven-year jail term and the sixth accused will serve six months in prison.

Court records show that the gang forged a passport for the teenager, manipulating her age, to fly her into the country. She was also raped and forced to work as a prostitute, according to investigations.

The victim said she met the fifth defendant in her home country. Knowing that she was an orphan, the woman lured her into coming to the UAE by offering her a job as a maid, according to court records.

Upon her arrival in the UAE, two members of the gang picked her up at the airport and the next thing she knew, she was already at a flat that was being run as a prostitution den, the victim said.

“When I was at the apartment, I entered a room where the second defendant sexually assaulted me, causing me to collapse,” she told the court.

She kept crying and refused to work, so the woman whom she met back home beat her up. “I was moved to another apartment where the fourth defendant lived. I was assaulted again, before I was transferred to a home of an Asian family, where I was made to work as a maid on an hourly basis.”

The victim said she spent two months with the family, but later found out that her salary was paid to the fourth accused. When she checked with the latter, he told her that she would not get any money, unless she agreed to work in prostitution.

The investigation revealed that the gang forced her to work in the den for two months, until the police raided the flat.

A witness from the Dubai Police said: “As soon as we received the information about the prostitution den, a police team was formed, raided the apartment and arrested the accused.”

• Dubai