©ANSA Idara* was planning to go to Italy with her husband. She ended up in prison in Tripoli instead, where she was turned into a sex slave by another Nigerian woman and her life turned into a living hell.
Idara is a Nigerian lady in her mid-thirties. She arrived in Tripoli with her husband six months ago. They planned to go to Italy together, but her husband left first as the boat was full. She was arrested while trying to illegally cross the Mediterranean and put in prison where she met another Nigerian woman called Abebi. Idara trusted her and asked her for help. What she didn't know was that Abebi was a human trafficker. "In Nigeria, I was selling clothes and had my own boutique. My husband and I decided to go to Italy together when everything happened so fast," Idara said. While in prison, her husband sent Abebi some money to help her free Idara (bribes are not unusual among the guards). Once out of prison, she forced Idara to work as a sex slave. "For 10 weeks, she made me work as a prostitute," Idara told ANSA. "She took me to her house and forced me to work for sex to pay the money back. I was never able to leave the house. She also took me to many brothels to work so I already paid that money. I cried everyday till the police attacked the house in Gargarish neighborhood and put me here in this detention center. "There are loads of girls, maybe more than thousands here dealing with human trafficking", Idara adds. She also said that all the people that she was supposed to cross the sea with died in the water.
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*Names have been changed to protect identity