PANA

French police burst Nigerian prostitution ring

PARIS, FRANCE — French police this week rounded up some 45 people involved in a Nigerian prostitution ring, the French newspaper Le Monde reported Saturday.

Two pimps presumed to be the brains behind the network were also nabbed in the swoop. They reportedly recruited girls in Nigeria and Sierra Leone, providing them with plane tickets to France.

Upon arrival in France, ring members helped the recruits obtain regular papers before despatching them to various prostitution joints in Paris and other major French cities.

"It is a profitable business in which some of the prostitutes are forced to make 1,000 Euros per day. It is outright slavery," an official of the association 'Les amis du Bus des femmes' bemoaned.

Every evening, members of the NGO cruise around the French capital distributing drinks, cakes and condoms to the prostitutes, while urging them to leave the profession.

In Saint-Denis in Paris 10^th district, some girls from Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Ghana turn tricks by proposing their charm to whoremongers for 30 Euros.

"Half of the 30 Euros that we earn for a trick go to the lady that rents us the room. We must also reimburse the plane ticket and pay for the services in the processing of our residence papers," said one of the prostitutes, requesting anonymity.

A fierce debate has broken out in France in the past two weeks between the people advocating criminal charges against whoremongers and those opposed to such action.

In Paris, the left-wing majority and some representatives from the Right are also at odds about the reopening of brothels which, according to the defenders of the idea, might facilitate the bursting of prostitution rings and arrest of pimps.

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