The Civil Guard, in collaboration with the Labor Inspectorate of Ávila, arrested three people for the crime of human trafficking in a company in Candeleda (Ávila) dedicated to the trade of packaged foods in which ten Nepalese women worked in semi-working conditions. -slavery since last September.
With the arrest of these three people, two businessmen and a member of the organization responsible for bringing these people, the first steps have been taken to dismantle a “criminal organization dedicated to human trafficking”, as explained it during a conference. The chief captain of the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police, Juan José Vallejo, press.
For this reason, he explained that the operation called “Lhotse” remains open without excluding new arrests within the framework of this action which, although announced this Friday, was carried out on October 2, as explained by the subdelegate of. of the Government of Ávila, Fernando Galeano.
These ten Nepalese citizens, aged 24 to 38, lived in semi-slavery conditions in a warehouse attached to the company, deprived of papers and money, unable to leave the facilities in which they lived in poverty without being accompanied, on rare occasions, by the person in the organization who was constantly monitoring them.
This situation caused their social isolation, as they also did not know Spanish and only communicated with a few words in English.
In the boat they were in, they slept on mattresses placed on the floor; there was a lack of heating; the windows had no glass and were covered in plastic; The kitchen was dirty and they had to share only one bathroom, which, in addition to limiting their privacy, made basic hygiene conditions difficult.
According to Juan José Vallejo, the “migratory cycle” of the victims, who arrived in Spain between July and August, began in their country of origin with a “capture” by an organization which “deceived them by promising them work in Spain” .
Subsequently, the network paid them for transport “because they lacked their own resources”, generating a debt of between 3,000 and 7,000 euros to make a trip whose first stage was in “transit countries” like Serbia or Romania, from where they continued “by land” to Spain.
Once they arrived at their first destination, they were housed in apartments rented by the network in large cities, until they were distributed to different regions of Spain to be exploited, as in the case of this company of Candeleda (5,000 inhabitants), dedicated to manufacturing and marketing. of packaged products and foods.
After their release, “they continued to think that they had to pay a debt to the organization” that had brought them to Spain, which made them “fearful”, according to the head captain of the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police.
They were first supported by the NGO APRAM, then other human rights organizations took over.
The Civil Guard, which transferred the trial to the Arenas Courts of San Pedro (Ávila), keeps the operation open, without excluding new arrests in the coming days or weeks.
