ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iran arrested the head of a network smuggling Iranian women for prostitution to the Kurdish capital of Erbil, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Monday.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) arrested a woman leading the “biggest" trafficking gang which has smuggled “more than a thousand” Iranian girls to Erbil, read the report from the outlet affiliated with the force.
"Promoting homosexuality, gambling, fraud, and denigration of illicit sexual relations and publishing it in cyberspace" is what the suspect is accused of, it added.
Erbil police department has not commented on the arrest yet.
Human trafficking is a stain that Tehran has not been able to get rid of for years now. It was among the “worst human traffickers” in 2018, a year after it ranked third in global human trafficking according to a US State Department Report.
Iranian women, boys, and girls are vulnerable to sex trafficking abroad, including in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, the department said in its annual report last year.
More than 2,000 young Iranian women and girls entered the Region in 2018, “many of whom are victims of sex trafficking in cafes, hotels, and massage centers,” it stated.
“Human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Iran, and traffickers exploit victims from Iran abroad.”
A human trafficking group that smuggled people from Iran to Basra was arrested in 2015.
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