Women jailed for forcing girls into prostitution

Two women who brought three teenagers to Dubai to work as prostitutes will each spend 10 years in prison.

The Iraqi women, 31 and 64, forged passports and altered the teenagers’ ages and names. They then took the girls to Dubai where they forced them to work in the sex industry.

The first victim, 23, told prosecutors that the younger defendant contacted her while she was in Iraq to offer her a job in Dubai. She was brought to the emirate in 2013.

She told the court that, when she arrived in the UAE, she was taken to a villa in Abu Dhabi where she was given a glass of juice that had been laced with drugs and lost consciousness. When she came to, she realised that she had been raped.

“Then I was forced to work in prostitution and I was paid between Dh1,500 and Dh6,000, all of which was taken by the first defendant,” she said.

The second girl, a 15-yearold divorcee who married at a young age after being orphaned, said she was working for US$10 (Dh37) a week in Iraq. “Then the first defendant brought me here [to Dubai] and forced me into prostitution,” she said.

The third victim, 16, told the court that she had run away from home because her father ran a brothel in Baghdad.

She said she was forced to work in prostitution but on May 16 last year she escaped from the brothel, a villa in Dubai, and went to Sharjah.

“I lived in a mosque for three days until a Palestinian woman sat with me and heard my story. The woman then took me to a police station in Dubai,” the girl said.

Police raided the villa in Al Qusais.

“We arrested the women and found more than Dh100,000 in cash with them,” said a police major, including the victims’ passports.

Yesterday, Dubai Criminal Court sentenced the two women to 10 years in jail each to be followed by deportation. They can appeal against their sentences within two weeks.