The High Criminal Court has begun hearing the case of seven persons, including four European women and a Bahraini man as well as an Asian man, all of whom are accused of forcing European women into prostitution.
Only four of the defendants, namely two European women and the Bahraini man, have appeared in the dock at the High Criminal, as the other two European women as well as the Asian man are at large.
The defendants are said to have faked many job offers which were packaged to the European women who were carefully chosen after understanding that they were in dire need of money. When the victims arrived from their countries, they were locked up in several apartments by the defendants and compelled to have paid sex with strangers.
According to court files, the defendants were threatened and physically attacked to meet their inhumane demands. They also revealed that the Bahraini defendant was the mastermind of the gang, while the other defendants’ roles were to manage the girls and monitor the apartments.
Astonishingly, the defendants managed to run their activities from 2017 until 2022. “I received a job offer, and I came to Bahrain. I was immediately locked up in an apartment and was forced to have sex with men. I was threatened and physically assaulted to accept doing that,” one of the victims told prosecutors.
The women were kept at the Protection Centre of the Labour Market Regulatory Authority. The defendants’ trial will resume on September 4, 2022, during which the prosecution witnesses will deliver their testimonies.
