Iran
uncovers gang smuggling underage prostitutes to
Persian Gulf countries
TEHRAN, Feb 6,
2000 (AFP) - The judiciary on Tuesday said a prostitution ring
which smuggled underage girls to Persian Gulf states was uncovered
and a number of people arrested, the official IRNA news agency
reported.
"The young
girls, aged between 13 and 17, were selected before being sent to
Arab countries in the Persian Gulf," said Abbasali Alizadeh,
head of the Tehran province judiciary cited by IRNA.
Alizadeh, who did
not use the term "prostitution", said the girls were
chosen from among families in which the parents were either drug
addicts or divorced.
He said a number
of people had been arrested, but gave no further details on their
identities, or on the number of girls involved.
Alizadeh added
that the girls were being kept in camera-controlled houses in
Tehran.
In January, Iran
announced it would no longer issue passports to women who have
been expelled from Persian Gulf countries on charges of
prostitution.
The measure, taken
to clamp down on "professional drug smugglers," was
decided after recent mass expulsions of prostitutes from several
Persian Gulf countries, the weekly Omid-e Javan said, citing
police officials.
Newspapers
said that police had also recently closed 29 brothels in Tehran,
an unprecedented report in Islamic Iran, where the existence of
prostitution had been officially unmentionable.