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Naija Voodoo by sage(m): 4:16am On May 23, 2009
U guyz might be interested in this


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/world/europe/23spain.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/5364373/Spanish-police-arrest-23-people-for-using-voodoo-curses.html


MADRID — The Spanish police have broken up what they said was a human trafficking ring that forced Nigerian women into prostitution by threatening them with voodoo curses.

The police said they arrested 23 people in several Spanish cities after a Nigerian woman in Seville claimed she was a victim of the ring and reported its activities to the police in February.

The traffickers lured their victims with promises of a better life in Europe and took them to a voodoo priest before departure, the police said in a statement. The traffickers then smuggled them to Spain, where they told the victims they had to repay a hefty debt for their journey through prostitution or face the wrath of voodoo spirits.

Musikilu Mojeed, a journalist for the Nigerian online newspaper 234Next.com, who has written about voodoo and human trafficking, said voodoo, known in Nigeria as juju, was a fairly common tool of intimidation used by traffickers.

Women were taken to a voodoo shrine and made to swear before a priest that they would never reveal the identities of the traffickers, he said. The priests took pieces of fingernails or hair from the women as part of the ritual.

“People here are very scared of the power of voodoo, so the traffickers tell the victims that if they do anything funny they will invoke voodoo,” Mr. Mojeed said in a telephone interview.

“They fear death, illness, any misfortune the priest tells them,” he added. “If the priest tells them they will get smallpox, then they believe they will catch smallpox.”

Police said the ringleaders, based in Spain, used family members in Nigeria to recruit women, take them to Libya via Niger and Benin, and then send them by boat to Italy and on to Spain.

Once in Spain, the traffickers told the women they owed them 50,000 euros, or nearly $70,000.

In October 2007 the Dutch police broke up a trafficking ring that had been smuggling and exploiting Nigerian children, mostly girls, and which also used threats of voodoo curses to gain a hold over them.

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