Albania and Colombia Arrest 17 for Trafficking Women for Sex Work

Albanian police (archive image). Photo: Geri Emiri/BIRN A group of suspected human traffickers, who had trafficked over 50 women, have been arrested in Albania and Colombia as a result of cooperation between the Albanian and Colombian authorities, it was announced on Friday by Eurojust, the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation. Eurojust said the group had created a human trafficking network in order to recruit vulnerable women from Colombia for sexual exploitation in Europe. “When the vulnerable women arrived in Albania, they were forced into prostitution. The criminal group used online escort platforms to exploit the women across Europe. The group is believed to have forced over 50 victims into prostitution,” a Eurojust statement said. “Any women who refused to work were held against their will and threatened with violence against their families in Colombia. A hotel in Tirana was transformed to forcefully detain and sexually exploit the women,” it added. Ten suspected human traffickers were arrested in Colombia and seven in Albania, Tirana Police said that two other people are wanted by the authorities. Police said the investigations started in February and are still “ongoing”. Human trafficking and poor treatment of foreign workers is widespread in Albania. According to a US State Department report on human trafficking published on September 29, “traffickers use social media to recruit potential victims and advertise commercial sex through mobile phone applications and online platforms. “In 2024, traffickers exploited foreign victims in sex trafficking and labour trafficking in construction from Afghanistan, Belarus, Brazil, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Egypt, Kosovo, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Thailand, Ukraine, and Venezuela,” the US State Department added. BIRN asked the Albanian Police about the total number of women who had been trafficked to Albania for sex work in the past two years but did not receive an answer by the time of publication.