Italian police arrested 14 people who are largely Nigerians on charges of trafficking Nigerian girls. Some of the girls are minors. Ten of the arrested people resided in Sicily and the Northern cities of Verona, Novara and Mondovi. The gang apparently used men who had good connections in Libya that would ferry the victims where they would become immigrants in Italy. The victims had been promised steady jobs and a good life in Italy. They were then threatened by a “witch doctor” in their home villages who used voodoo rites to get them to promise to pay back the 25,000 euros they each paid to get to Italy, police said.
The young ambitious women and girls cross the Mediterranean from Libya in boats that were picked up by rescue ships and then reassembled in Sicily. Their earnings were sent back to the witch doctor in Nigeria to be distributed around the gang and pay for more recruits, police said.