TWO teenage girls have been rescued from a trafficking network that lured vulnerable migrant children out of Gran Canaria’s care homes for sexual exploitation abroad.
The Guardia Civil also managed stopped four more girls from being trafficked out of the islands to face a similar unimagineable fate.
The network targeted unaccompanied migrant girls, most of sub-Saharan African origin, who had been placed in the care of child protection centres on the island after arriving in Spain alone, with no parent or guardian to turn to.
Investigators say the gang deliberately targeted that isolation, seeking out girls with no family ties in Spain, limited Spanish and a determination to leave the Canary Islands for work or a new life elsewhere in Europe.
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They offered what looked like a route out of the centres, then handed the girls identity and travel documents bearing names that were not their own.
Some of the girls were flown to mainland Spain or on to France, where investigators believe a number were then sexually exploited.
The case came to light after a teenage girl who had left a Gran Canaria care centre made it back to Spain from France and told investigators she had been lured with the promise of a job.
That account led detectives to a string of similar cases: girls leaving centres without their identity papers, only to turn up hours later booked onto flights to the mainland.
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Agents identified a clear division of labour inside the sexual slavery gang.
Some members made contact with the girls from inside the care centres, others handled false documents, belongings and plane tickets, and others walked the girls through airport security to make sure they reached the boarding gate.
That detail proved decisive: agents were able to confirm the girls escorted through security were not isolated runaways, but part of an organised pattern repeated over time using false identities.
The arrests came on July 29, when agents from the Guardia Civil’s Equipo contra el Crimen Organizado (ECO) — its organised crime unit in the Canary Islands, part of the national Unidad Central Operativa (UCO) — raided five addresses across Gran Canaria alongside the judicial police unit in Las Palmas, in an operation the Guardia Civil has named Jabany.
Five people were arrested, one of them a minor.
The searches turned up documents, mobile phones, other electronic devices and cash, the Guardia Civil said.
The Guardia Civil has not ruled out further arrests.
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