The National Police has opened an investigation to clarify if a woman with dwarfism of Guinean origin managed to pass herself off as an unaccompanied foreign minor in a minors' center in Lanzarote to recruit girls and prostitute them in France, according to what has been published by El Español.
The newspaper points out that the woman, 32 years old, arrived by dinghy in Lanzarote and managed to bypass controls upon disembarking on the island by posing as a child due to her height, less than 1.50 meters. After her arrival at the dock, the National Police classified her as an "evident minor" and for this reason, the bone and dental tests were not performed on her that would have revealed her real age.
The woman was referred to a girls' juvenile center in Lanzarote where, according to El Español, thanks to her maturity and her leadership attitude, she managed to become the group's reference and convince the minors that the Canary Islands was just one more step on the way and that France would be the final destination where they would achieve a better life with work.
Her influence caused that thirteen minors from the center disappeared, but not at once, but one by one and progressively so as not to raise suspicions. All this she achieved without violence against the girls, who left the center with hardly any luggage. Furthermore, El Español assures that the days before their departure, they transferred their belongings to apartments controlled by the network on the island.
Once they managed to leave the center without raising suspicions, the network provided them with false documentation such as Côte d'Ivoire passports, wigs and clothes to change their physical appearance.
To get to France, they took a flight from Lanzarote to Madrid, always accompanied by adults. Once in the Spanish capital, other members of this human trafficking network picked them up, took their passports from them and took them towards the buses to transfer them to France.
This medium points out that this network had a great international coordination with contacts in Guinea, Morocco and Mauritania.
Detention in extremis
The National Police started an investigation and discovered "at the last minute" the plot that this woman was carrying out when she tried to board a flight with three minors and irregularities were found in their documents.
Upon analyzing their mobile, investigators found a key message: "I have already emptied the girls' center". This information brought to light this plot that the police are still investigating.
Currently, the whereabouts of the thirteen minors missing from the center are unknown and the hypotheses being considered by the National Police is that they may have been deceived to be laborally exploited, destined for forced marriages or prostitution.
However, according to this medium, this last hypothesis is the one gaining more strength as child pornography was found on the phone of one of those involved.
