Iran
- Friday 27 October 2000 - Agence France Presse
TEHRAN,
Oct 27 (AFP) - Iranian police have broken up a network smuggling
runaway girls into Persian Gulf states that was led by a woman who
sold her own daughter into slavery, a newspaper reported Thursday.
Ringleader
Azar Dakht, 57, confessed to setting up her human chattel business
four years ago after pocketing 40,000 dirhams (11,000 dollars) by
selling her daughter to a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, the
Jam-e-Jam paper said.
It
said Dakht "hunted down runaway girls" and then sold them in
"neighbouring Persian Gulf states."
Police
discovered the ring after coming across a "house of
corruption" in Tehran, where young women were being sexually
abused, while investigating the disappearance of a 16-year-old, the
paper said.
Dakht
is expected to be sentenced to 10 years in prison at the end of the
trial, it said, as Tehran deals with a mounting problem of female
runaways.
A
government newspaper said earlier this month that one young
woman in Tehran is now raped and murdered every six days as criminals
take advantage of runaways, mostly young women unhappy at home.