"As Nigerian sex trafficking rises, Italy tracks
crime kingpins"
In criminal network gripped by fear of black magic,
Nigerian sex worker is murdered in Italy, then her body disappeared - "only a few bones remained"
CATANIA, Italy, Nov 9 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Italian prosecutor Lina Trovato first came across a
sex trafficking suspect called "Mummy", she sensed she was onto something
especially sinister.
The code name had appeared several times in wiretapped conversations between
Nigerian gang members in Italy and their
apparently female boss back in the West African state.
"If one of the (trafficked sex worker) girls went astray, the agents in Italy always informed 'Mummy' - otherwise
known as the
Queen Bee of Nigerian trafficking - so she could keep them in line," Trovato told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Several months of investigation led police to swoop in and
arrest six people in the Italian cities of Rome, Genoa and Catania, she said. The six are awaiting trial.
Nigerian crime gangs have proliferated in Italy, controlling an extensive network of prostitutes and ordering them "on demand" from Nigeria, Italian police and prosecutors say.
But now the Nigerian gangs, who have been
active in Italy for more than a decade, are taking on
increasingly violent tactics, including knife crime and even forging close relations with notorious mafia groups, the Cosa Nostra and the Camorra, law enforcement agencies in Italy say.
For now, the prosecutors said there was no evidence mafia were running the Nigerian sex trafficking network from Palermo, but
it could have connections with organised crime gangs on mainland Italy.
The people who
export (Nigerian victims) are
in other countries," Spedale said. "But there
is a
mastermind controlling it in
Italy. It exists."
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