A gang will spend seven years in a Dubai jail for trafficking women and forcing them into sex work. Four Bangladeshi citizens, a Pakistani man and an Indonesian women were convicted of human trafficking, confinement and forcing women into prostitution. Another Indonesian woman involved was sentenced to one year in prison for aiding and abetting. Judges at Dubai Criminal Court were told that an Indonesian woman, 30, who worked as a domestic worker in the UAE, was encouraged, by one of the accused, to abscond for what she thought was a better paying job in Dubai. The man, with the help of the some of the other accused, lured her to a flat in Al Hamriya, where they locked her up and took away the SIM card from her phone. There were several women being held against their will in the flat, the court heard. “They monitored us with cameras. We couldn’t step out of the apartment,” the victim said. “I had a mobile phone without a SIM card but managed to connect to an open wifi network, then contacted my sister on Facebook,” said the woman. The sister called police, who raided the flat and arrested those involved. They were convicted in court on Thursday and all six will be deported after serving their prison terms.
