Edition 113
www.thecourier.es
Friday, April 19, 2013
THE SPANISH BOMBSHELL
THE SHAME GAME SPAIN has the secondhighest number of human-trafficking and sex-slavery cases in Europe, according to recent research. EU statistics firm Eurostat says that in 2010 – the most recent year for which official figures are known - a total of 1,605 women were smuggled into the country and held hostage, being forced to work as prostitutes against their will. And this does not include the ones who have not yet been found, or who escaped without the police finding out. In fact, there are more cases of forced prostitution among immigrants in Spain than in Romania, despite the fact that a high number
of human-trafficking victims come from the latter country, says Eurostat. Only Italy has a higher number of women forced into sex slavery – 2,381, more than double Romania's 1,154. Even in the Netherlands, where prostitution is legally regulated – or perhaps because of this – the victim count is lower, with 993 women trafficked in 2010. A total of 651 cases were detected in Germany in the same year. Eurostat also reveals that the number of human-trafficking cases
Cont’d on Page 2
A PRESSURE cooker allegedly used for bombs during Sunday’s Boston Marathon was made in Spain, according to US investigators. At a news conference on Wednesday, authorities said they had found destroyed
Fagor link to blast
parts of a Fagor-made pressure cooker along with a detonator and cables they believed were used to set off the explosive devices during the race, taking the lives of three people and injuring
close to 180. The evidence was sent to the FBI labs in Quantico, Virginia where experts hope to try to reconstruct the bomb and perhaps shed some light as to who was behind the ter-
Investigators comb through the site of one of the Boston blasts
rorist attack. Sara de la Hera, vice president of sales and marketing at Fagor, said that her company sells about 50,000 pressure cookers in the United States annually. The model in the FBI’s possession has a six-litre capacity. Agents will also see if they can determine where the appliance was purchased. The cooker’s top was discovered on the roof of a building near where the device was placed, authorities said. Pressure cookers have been used by terrorists to fabricate bombs in Afghanistan, Iraq, India and Nepal. According to a Spanish government terrorism report, these improvised artifacts have been used more than 200 plots and actual terrorist attacks in the United States from 2001 to 2011.
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