Four men and two men are accused of human trafficking in Slovakia and face prison sentences of 7 to 12 years. Aided by unknown people from the UK, they allegedly picked young women and lured them abroad. According to the charge, they targeted the Roma, and women from a socially weak environment. They are said to have secured accommodation and transport abroad for them.
In the UK, they first learned about the true goal of their journey, i. By marrying women from Slovakia, the Pakistanis wanted to legalise their stay in a European-Union member state. According to the charge, defendants picked the victims among Roma families with many children, some of which had grown up in an orphanage and then left to live in settlements in terrible conditions. Some were already mothers of small children, and one was pregnant by that time.
All of them were unemployed and poor, which is one of the reasons why they were lured so easily with the prospect of getting well-paid jobs. If the defendants managed to persuade a woman, they brought her to a house in the village of Pavlovce nad Uhom with nothing but an ID card on them. Then, accompanied by people tasked, they travelled to England or Scotland to guarded houses.
Immediately after their arrival, they were stripped of their documents, and offered to Pakistani men as brides. After the prospective bridegroom chose one of them, she was pressured by marriage brokers into wedlock while in a dire situation: in a strange environment, without money, ID card and language skills. The women were also forced into prostitution. Altogether, the Slovak group enticed six women to the UK but after arriving to the country, their fates were quite different.
The fourth one was purchased by a Pakistani, but before the wedding could take place, she bore a child. By claiming he was the father of her child, the man legalised his stay in the UK. The next one was refused entry to the UK, remained in France and returned home on her own. After a police operation, she returned to Slovakia in November Four defendants refused to testify and two claimed they were innocent. However, all of them were proven guilty by the victims in police line-ups who also described all the events, from persuasion in Slovakia to distress abroad.
