the district Court in Växjö brought down on Wednesday, six people for trafficking in human beings and a person for aiding and abetting the same crimes. At the same time acquitted a person charged with aiding and abetting.
the Penalties were determined prison sentence of between 1.5 and 5.5 years.
for human trafficking, organised begging in Växjö and the surrounding area. They have recruited beggar in Bulgaria, housed in caravans or cars in camp in the woods. Some have lived in a villa in Hultsfred.
the Beggars have received a fixed ”salary” and forced to disgorge all they begged together with the perpetrators. But this would not have to involve human trafficking.
– To have beggars employees is not in itself enough to make itself guilty of human trafficking, ” says the chief judge: Lars-Olle Larsson in a news release.
It made it to the sex of the perpetrators has yet been convicted for this is that the beggars all in all ”been exploited in such a way that they have found themselves in an emergency, and this has been the aim of the perpetrators ‘ actions,” according to the law.
Some of the beggars have been recruited in a fraudulent manner and misled about the prospects of tiggandet. Some of them have also been abused, been in debt and been given smaller food rations when they are not begged enough.
nine people in the current group of the beggars are victims of trafficking in human beings. There are those in the group who, in virtue of being related with the ”right” people, got to keep what they begged together, and had better living conditions.
One of the persons indicted for complicity to trafficking in human beings is acquitted. He had some of the beggars live in a part of his house, but the prosecutor claimed never to he had any financial gain of inhysningen.
The now convicted men believed to have carried out more than two million sek from Sweden to Bulgaria for a period of two years. The league consists of a man in his 60s, his three sons, and two of his grandchildren and a friend of the family, all the bulgarians.
During his reconnaissance, the police have a total observed 60 beggars are believed to have been part of the league’s network.
All the defendants have pleaded not guilty. A 22-year-old man has claimed that they have helped their fellow countrymen.
” His family has begged for him, and then, they have managed to get hold of an accommodation so that they have been able to help their countrymen, so they did not stay in the cars and in car parks, said his defense attorney before the trial.
it took so long for the police to start investigating the case, reports the SR.
looking for food started in may of this year then one of the vulnerable, the beggars found beaten in a ditch. But already in november 2017 alerted police to a store outside of Växjö ago a Bulgarian man has given signals that he was subjected to coercion.
the Man told me in interviews that he and 30 others had to beg.
According to Jan-Åke Fields, complainant for several of the vulnerable, among others, the man who made the notification, should the police have reacted already.
– in the case of such a serious crime, there are reasons to act as swiftly as possible, ” he says to SR.
Madeleine Sundell, a lawyer and national coordinator against human trafficking at the salvation army, I also think that the police should have taken the notification seriously.
Police defend delay with a single notification is rarely enough to launch a resource-intensive investigation. It is needed in a rule, more questioning and more details. The notifying the man traveled back to Bulgaria and was difficult to reach.
Read more: Several prosecuted for trafficking in human beings in tiggerihärva
