Russia 'sex traffickers' deported from Bahrain

Two Russian women accused of enslaving women for sex work in Bahrain have been deported to Russia from the Gulf state.

The Russian Interior Ministry said the women were arrested by Bahraini police after an alert via Interpol.

It said they were part of a Russian trafficking gang who lured young women to Bahrain with promises of work.

But once there, accomplices seized their passports, kept them under guard and threatened beatings, to force them into prostitution.

The gang operated in Russia's Urals region, where poverty is widespread.

The ministry said the victims had been "recruited" in Udmurtia, Perm and Chelyabinsk, in the period 2011-2016.

Russian media report that the women had been duped with promises of lucrative work in bars and restaurants in oil-rich Bahrain - with no mention of prostitution.

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A criminal case was opened into the gang in November 2016. In June this year a woman in the Perm region was given a six-year jail term for trafficking 23 women to Bahrain for prostitution.

At the trial it emerged that Olga Goryachikh, from the Urals town of Chaykovsky, had received 1m roubles (about £13,000; $17,195) for each woman trafficked, Russia's Kommersant daily reported. She had paid six other gang members from that income.

Goryachikh gave details of the gang's operations, in a confession to police.

The investigation enabled Russian police to locate other gang members in Bahrain.

Russian police were tipped off about the criminal network after two women managed to flee after 18 months of sex slavery in Bahrain and returned to Russia, Kommersant reported.