Police dismantle human trafficking network

According to the spokesman for the Luanda provincial command of the National Police, Nestor Goubel, the information came to the attention of authorities after a complaint, with the implicated citizen being absent from the country.

"The provincial command of Luanda became aware of this occurrence through the operating room of the municipal command of Cazenga, which within its actions to combat crime and within the cycle of information searches carried out by the police information section and the result of a complaint , on the 6th of the current month and year, which realized that in the 11 de Novembro neighborhood, on Cardoso Street, there was a group that practiced this crime of trafficking in human beings," he said.

Nestor Goubel noted that the 55-year-old accused constantly received minors from Nigeria, which he raised until adulthood, and were subsequently returned to their country of origin.
"But during this period that these minors were in the place, they were subjected to slavery, prostitution services, as well as they were forced to procreate, inside the residence. There was a whole scheme and it probably involved high monetary sums, [being] the same submitted to this kind of inconvenience," he explained.

According to the police officer, on Tuesday afternoon, a multidisciplinary team composed of criminal investigation and public order bodies arrested three people, who were assisting the Nigerian citizen, and rescued nine victims, girls and women, aged between 10 and 43 years old.

"The steps continue, they are underway in order to locate and detain the moral author, who is the conductor, the 'Papa Ladji'. Here the appeal that remains is for the populations to continue to denounce, because here it is necessary to recognize, that it was the result of a denunciation that everything would have come to the attention of the authorities, and resulted in all these steps", he underlined.

The police spokesman in Luanda urged the families to take care of the children, so that "those individuals, who are on hand to sow in the city, especially in some arteries of the city, cannot carry out these crimes," he said.

"Another appeal has to do with the no shelter, non-protection of individuals foreign citizens with illegal immigration status. Avoid renting your houses to individuals whose provenance is not even known, avoid this type of situation, because you never know how much is that they are dealing with criminals," he said.