Three jailed for running brothel with underage girls

Dubai - The flat was partitioned into four beds separated by curtains

Two men (an Indian businessman and a Bangladeshi unemployed) and a Bangladeshi runaway woman have all been cleared of a human trafficking charge.
The trio was accused of luring two underage girls to travel from Bangladesh here and then forcing them into prostitution.
However, the Court of First Instance found them guilty of running a prostitution den in Naif and sentenced each of them to three years in jail.
The businessman, 46, who is the main accused, was fined Dh 50,000 for hiring the Bangladeshi man illegally.
The latter, accused of overstaying with an expired visa and breaching the Foreigners' Residency and Entry Law, has been sentenced to additional two months in jail for that violation.
The businessman was fined another Dh 2,000 for possession of liquor.
Prosecution records show he had consensual sex with one of the teen victims and he had liquor bottles in his possession at the time of his arrest.
The three defendants will all be deported after completing their jail sentences.
Both the victims were under the age of 18 when they had been brought here by the accused. They lied about their ages to be older in their passports.
One of them said the Bangladeshi man, who helped her have a passport back home, wrote her age as 25 instead of 18 in her passport.
She was picked up from Sharjah International Airport on January 29, 2016. "I was promised a job as a housemaid. A man took me to a flat in Deira. A woman told me that the flat was being run as a den for prostitution and that I had no choice but to work for them," the victim said.
"Then one of them threatened he would click and circulate nude pictures of me on Facebook," she testified.
She was locked up and forced to work in prostitution.
A police captain said they received information about an Asian man running a brothel in Freej-Al Murar in Naif. "We heard he was forcing a 16-year-old into prostitution. We sent an informant there to check it out," the officer said.
On April 13, 2016, the police obtained a public prosecution warrant for search and arrest.
They arrested the first accused in Deira around 4 pm and he confessed to the officers he had a flat where he facilitated prostitution.
The police found a surveillance camera fixed on the door. Women found to be working willingly as prostitutes were arrested and deported later.
The flat was partitioned into four beds separated by curtains.
mary@khaleejtimes.com