ARENAL – PROMISED work and given false contracts, a group of Bulgarian women were smuggled onto the island and forced to work in the sex trade.

Six people have been detained for the crimes involved in what the police have called ‘Operation San Valentin’. V.S.K, 28 and lover M.D.N, 22, N.S.K, 35 and partner T.Y.M, 19, all of Bulgarian Nationality have been charged with holding people against their will, sexual aggression, illicit association and various charges related to prostitution.

The other two people detained, I.Y.G, 41 and S.M.L, 42, Bulgarian and Spanish respectively, have also been accused for the crimes stated above, however with the additional charge of managing the establishment in which the women were forced to work. Despite this operation running for some time, police only became aware of it last week when a prostitute complained that she was being held in the profession against her will.

On further investigation police discovered that a group of Bulgarian women were being held under surveillance in a house in Can Pastilla. The house was under constant guard with two people on watch. Women were fed here and then ferried to and from the club were they were obliged to work.

Interpol has confirmed that the documentation which allowed these women entry into the country are false, as are the contracts in the tourism sector for the jobs the women were originally lured by.

Many of the women were already being manipulated in Bulgaria, working the sex trade in order to protect their families and themselves from violent threats and probably action if they did not oblige.