Picture used for illustrative purposes.

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

The Dubai Criminal Court sentenced a gang of three Asians to five years in jail to be followed by deportation on human trafficking charges.

The defendants forced a maid to work as a prostitute after they had fraudulently sent her messages via Facebook telling her about a job opportunity as a maid against a high salary.

The incident took place in Al Quoz Industrial Area where an Asian girl filed a complaint that a gang kept her in an apartment where she was forced to work as a prostitute.

According to the complainant’s statement, she arrived in the UAE in 2021 with an employment contract to work as a maid for a family.

She continued to work for three months, during which she virtually met an Asian girl on Facebook, who told her that she was a UAE resident and had a job opportunity with a salary higher than hers, she said.

The victim added in the interrogations that she decided to run away from her sponsor to get the offer that her friend told her about and she agreed with her friend to meet near her sponsor’s house.

There, however, she was surprised by a person who alleged that he came to take her to her friend but he took her instead to a brothel and told her that her new job would be inside the apartment, she said.

The victim said she refused to work as a prostitute and tried to escape but two of the defendants - a girl and a man - assaulted her and told her that they bought her for Dhs6,000 from the first defendant.

The victim was kept inside the apartment for a while and was allowed to use her mobile phone only to call her parents abroad.

She added that she tried to escape again but one of the defendants assaulted her and demanded she pay Dhs10,000 to let her go. She asked for help from a customer who assisted her in locating where she was kept. She then called the police and told them that she was kept in an apartment where she was forced to work as a prostitute.

According to the official documents, a team of detectives reached the described site and arrested the gang members, who ran a brothel and used girls of various nationalities.

On interrogation, the gang members confessed to the charges, adding that one of them created a page on Facebook to lure girls and sell them to the second and third defendants, who used to keep the girls and force them to work as prostitutes.