TEHRAN
Police
in northeast Iran have arrested 243 members of five
"kidnapping, prostitution and murder" networks, with a
court sentencing an undisclosed number of the detainees to
death, the Entekhab paper reported on Wednesday.
Police
in Tehran, meanwhile, shut down a brothel run by a 74-year-old
woman who had employed "hundreds of young girls," the
paper said.
Also,
an Iranian court has jailed some 40 Pakistanis who duped girls,
some only 12 years old, into going to Pakistan where they were
forced to work as prostitutes, the Khorasan newspaper reported
on Sunday.
The
Pakistanis presented themselves to poor Iranian families and
asked to marry their daughters, the paper said, but then brought
the girls to brothels in their home country.
The
judge said other suspects were granted "Islamic
forgiveness" and freed after helping authorities secure the
return of some of the girls.
He
also called on any other members of the prostitution ring to
take advantage of an amnesty and turn themselves in.
If
they did not, he said, authorities would "publish all the
information we have on them in the press and hand their cases
over to Interpol."
Meanwhile,
police also arrested eight people in a raid on a brothel in the
southern city of Shiraz, including four members of the same
family, the Jame Jam newspaper said on Sunday.
AFP
http://www.metimes.com/2K2/issue2002-43/women/iranian_police_smash.htm