Group
Smuggling Girls to Persian Gulf States Busted
Iran News (Tehran)
Posted Wednesday
February 7, 2001 - 09:51:53 AM EST
Tehran - A corrupt
band engaged in the smuggling of young Iranian girls to Persian
Gulf states to engage in the illicit sex trade, have been arrested
by security forces, the Head of the Tehran Justice Department
Abbas-Ali Alizadeh said in Shahr-e Rey yesterday. He said the
group's tactics included seducing 13-year-old girls into giving
their consent with promises of money and transporting them to
customers in the Persian Gulf states.
"Some 90
percent of the girls' parents were addicted to illegal drugs or
divorced," Alizadeh said, adding they were often accomplices
in the illegal activity. The group were equipped with in-circuit
surveillance cameras, mobile phones and other devices in their
residences here, he said.
Special security
forces, headed by the deputy chief of the Justice Department of
the capital, have identified a considerable number of groups and
intermediary persons involved in the smuggling of young girls,
Alizadeh said. He added police in Tehran and neighboring Bumhen
seized some 40,000 liters of domestically-produced as well as
14,000 liters of foreign alcoholic drinks last week.
According to the
deputy, most of the corrupt bands are run and encouraged by
enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, adding that a physical
encounter would virtually be inefficient because of the
complicated modus operandi of the groups. He called on the Iranian
government, members of Parliament as well as the Judiciary to help
in fighting the increasing debauchery and corruption confronting
the country, adding that this needed the cultivation of strong
cultural values in the country, IRNA reported.
©
2001 Iran News (Tehran).
http://www.middleeastwire.com/iran/stories/20010207_1_meno.shtml