[Intime News]
Four Bulgarian nationals have been arrested for allegedly tricking other vulnerable people from Bulgaria into coming to work in Greece, where they were kept under harsh conditions and forced into effective slavery.
A police statement Tuesday said one of the suspects also faces rape charges for allegedly abducting a woman from a village in Bulgaria and bringing her to Greece, where he sexually assaulted her and forced her to have sex with an elderly man for money.
The crackdown followed a phone call for help from two Bulgarian men in the Farsala region of central Greece. When police located them, they said they had been brought there Friday after answering an online employment advert, and had their identity papers seized by the suspects. They said they were taken to a hut in a rural part of Farsala, where they found another four Bulgarian men who had been housed there and forced to perform agricultural labor without pay.
The suspects, who were arrested Saturday, were identified as two men aged 26 and 48, and two women aged 24 and 44. They face charges including human trafficking and belonging to a criminal organization.