Dutch authorities had been investigating the disappearance of 140 Nigerian children from asylum-seeker holding centres since January 2006.

Several of the children were later found working as prostitutes in France, Italy and Spain, according to Dutch police.

Thirteen arrests were made in Dutch cities and towns while a further six people, all Nigerians, were detained in New York, Madrid, Dublin, Coventry and Antwerp.

Police said Germany and France were also involved in the operation but did not give details of any arrests there, though they said that "dozens" of arrests and searches of premises had been made overall.

Those arrested are suspected of people-trafficking and involvement in a criminal organisation, falsifying travel documents, fraud and money-laundering.

The Hague has asked for the suspects arrested abroad to be extradited to the Netherlands.

"The human-traffickers supplied the victims with false travel documents, flight tickets and instructions to seek asylum upon arrival at Schiphol Airport [Amsterdam]," a police statement said.

"The minors were placed in open shelters in the Netherlands, which made it relatively easy for the criminal organisation to keep control over the victims.

"Voodoo sometimes also kept the minors in line. In Nigeria they were forced to take a vow before a voodoo priest to repay a so-called debt.

"This debt had to settled with the earnings made in the prostitution. At their final destination the minor victims are under the constant supervision of a so-called 'Madam'."

This is one of those "where's the outrage?" stories. There is a very serious problem in the third world. Between terrorism (i.e. violent, radical Islam) and organized crime, children born in Africa and the Middle East don't stand a chance. When is the West going to finally admit something must be done other than the spouting of rhetoric?

Seven suspected "coyotes," or human smugglers, were arrested after sheriff's deputies raided a suspected drophouse in west Phoenix, where several undocumented immigrants were the victims of beatings and torture, authorities said Saturday.

A total of 54 people, including the suspects and four children, were rounded up at a house in the 9400 block of West Coolidge Lane, south of Camelback Road, said Capt. Paul Chagolla, spokesman for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

The raid was launched Friday, and the investigation at the home continued Saturday.

At least seven people were tortured there, including a man who was assaulted, threatened with a gun and had a plastic bag placed over his head before it was submerged in an unflushed toilet, Chagolla said.

The man's pregnant spouse was taken to a hospital for treatment of a severe assault that likely will result in the loss of the unborn child, he said.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a former regional director for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said shoving a head into a toilet is a common method of torture in Mexico.

"It appears the illegal criminal element is entering this county and is bringing its methods of carnage," Arpaio said.

When I hear people making excuses for illegal immigration, this is the kind of stuff that comes to mind for me. Sure there are illegal aliens who want to come here to make a better life and they somehow bypassed getting killed or tortured. Read the words from a sheriff who faces illegal immigration regularly: "It appears the illegal criminal element is entering this country and is bringing its methods of carnage."

I will never understand the politics that drive people to selectively apply outrage and condemnation. While the media will jump on any story involving the military and torture, even making a military-run operation synonymous with heinous evil ala Abu Graib and Gitmo, a literal house of horrors is a weekend wire story with zero traction. Real torture, not some fabrication about a book in a toilet. A real human being was dunked into a toilet as a direct result of illegal immigration.

You won't see outrage because it would start an honest debate about how that couple ended up in that situation. Both sides of the isle in Washington don't want the public to know how two-faced they are when it comes to illegal immigration. The media doesn't want anyone to know how selective it is when it comes to pushing stories. The lack of debate means illegal immigration continues unchecked while real people go through hell to cross the border, paying off sociopath traffickers.

This is the first case of an international man hunt of this scale for a pedophile. I think INTERPOL has linked him to some key international sex traffickers. Based on his background, he is obviously not a trafficker; he's a user. As a result, the media mainly focuses on him and not his network. One most excellent article from the Canadian Press tells how open some Asian countries are about selling out children (see Corrupt law enforcement, sex networks provide cover for pedophiles in Asia.

Across Asia, hundreds of thousands of girls and boys are believed to work in the sex trade mostly in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines.

Some of their customers – mostly older men – commit their crimes with relative impunity, walking hand-in-hand with underage girls in Bangkok or with boys in a resort hotel on the Indonesian island of Bali. The victims in many cases are the poorest children, including beggars, street children and the homeless.

. . . .

Other pedophiles operate more covertly, depending on secretive pedophile rings in cyberspace to find their victims. The networks offer tips on the best places to meet children or arrange sexual rendezvous in luxury condos or on private yachts.

To get access to such networks and earn credibility among their fellow pedophiles, they often must provide evidence of sex acts they have committed with children – as Neil appears to have done by putting the sexually explicit photos of himself with young boys.

Still others turn to jobs like teaching or tutoring that gives them ready access to youngsters. Teaching English is especially popular because jobs are easy to get and the position carries with it a level of authority that makes it difficult for the children and even their parents to question abuses.

Sick. There are so many angles to this story: pedophile teachers, international sex trafficking of children, and how the Internet is used to connect networks of pedophiles. I would like to see many more stories like the Canadian Press story quoted above. This problem is not going away; it's getting worse.

The report states that 1.2 million children and babies are trafficked every year, including into Western Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean, and the number is increasing.

Gangs involved in child and people trafficking make an estimated profit of 32 billion dollars per year (£16 billion), the charity said.

Approximately 1.8 million children are being abused through prostitution, child pornography and sex tourism – and 75% of the UK's child prostitutes are girls.

The report states that youngsters often lose their childhood by being sold into adult relationships.

"Child marriage, which often includes mail order and internet brides, is one of the most widespread, yet hidden, forms of slavery," says the report.

"Girls as young as four are forced to live and have sex with their husband, and are often kept trapped indoors.

"Girls under 15 are five times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than women over 20. In Afghanistan more than half of all girls are married before they are 16."

The report concludes that one million children risk their lives working in quarries across Africa, Asia and south America.

And that 300,000 under 15s are involved in fighting forces with an estimated 11,000 children being held by warring factions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Jasmine Whitbread, Save the Children's chief executive, said: "Child slavery is not a historical phenomenon – it is a stark reality for millions of children in both poor and rich countries.

"Governments everywhere, including the UK, are not doing enough to respond to the plight of children in this inhumane situation.

"World leaders and international donors must act as a matter of urgency to address child slavery and put in place the laws and resources needed to eradicate these terrible practices."

These are stark statistics. Read the whole article and then get the report from The Small Hands of Slavery press release page or here on my site.

Anthony Mark Bianchi, 45, was convicted of having sex with or attempting to have sex with at least six teenage boys in the isolated Moldovan village of Trebujeni.

During the three-week trial, most of which was heard through translators, several Moldovan boys testified that Bianchi assaulted them in small boarding houses where he stayed during his trips.

Bianchi's attorney, Mark Geragos, said his client, who lives in North Wildwood, N.J., enjoyed traveling to offbeat destinations and had no ulterior motives for giving the boys gifts.

Yeah, right. Bianchi is just a benevolent American helping poor foreign boys, not girls, out. Bianchi is one of the sickest individuals I've read about in a long time. The article doesn't give any details about his previous conviction and expulsion from Russia for the very same thing. I'm glad to see this verdict handed down. I hope the sentence will be the maximum.

I do have a problem with the media coverage of this story. Again, the media ignore the connections between Bianchi's victims and worldwide human trafficking. This is a much bigger story than that of a forty-five year old pervert molesting children. Bianchi knew where to go and who to contact. The hit-and-run coverage doesn't investigate Ion Gusin, his co-conspirator. None of the stories go into detail regarding the accessibility of children as sex slaves in Moldova, Cuba, Romania, and Thailand. How complicit are these countries' governments regarding the "sex tourism" business?

I suppose this is an ugly story that doesn't fit the infotainment template.

According to Paktiawal, among trafficking victims were tens of Afghan children, boys and girls, who had been taken to neighbouring countries for forced servitude, sexual exploitation and other illegal purposes.

Inside Afghanistan, traffickers use their minor victims for narcotics smuggling and hard labour, Afghan police said.

“Adult Afghans also fall prey to traffickers, due to widespread poverty and unemployment. The traffickers mostly exploit their victims in the regional [labour] markets,” said Paktiawal.

An official at Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also confirmed that hundreds of young Afghans are annually trafficked to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other countries where they are widely exploited and used in complex forced servitude.

The emphasis is mine.

Human trafficking is messy and hard to track, like drug trafficking. But everybody knows it's going on and who the major players are. Reports continually point to major United Nations players as the worst violators of human rights, yet these same countries (i.e. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, etc.) consistently complain about Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. Puuuuleeez. How can anybody look at a representative from an Islamic country and take complaints about human rights abuse seriously? How can the U.S. State Department continue to pretend these stone age countries are our equal? If little children weren't forced to be camel jockeys and sex slaves for demented Muslim pedophiles, it might be laughable.

The U.S. tolerance for bad behavior is described as diplomacy, but the reality is we do it for commerce. I've written before about how our trading partners get a criticism-free ride. Since when does commerce become more important than the welfare of children? That's not the way this country is supposed to be. In my perfect world, the U.S. would have learned from history and made damn sure nobody was treated like European Jews and Gypsies during World War II or the citizens of Stalin's Russia. However, the Greatest Generation is too old to suit up again and today's generation only gets angry over carbon footprints and Paris Hilton's jail sentence.

Our troops are in Afghanistan and this is going on during our watch. This shouldn't be happening.

This AP story doesn't discuss human trafficking directly, but talks more about constitutional issues related to prosecuting and defending American citizens for acts committed in other countries. The human trafficking side of this story is that somebody is putting these children on the auction block. While Bianchi is paying somebody for his excursions, he is the only one getting prosecuted unfortunately. There are more like Bianchi who will take his place. The story doesn't cover the trafficking angle and leaves all of the blame on Americans who perform sex tourism abroad. This is shameful considering that while Bianchi paid for sex with children and deserves nothing less than life in prison, somebody either bought or kidnapped his victims and pimped them to the wealthy American.

Representatives of Child Protective Services and the Clark County Department of Family Services on Friday conducted a health and welfare check at the home, where they interviewed 14 residents, including five juveniles ages 14 to 17, according to a criminal complaint.

Victims said Li promised them $300 to $1,600 a month to perform with the China Star Acrobats, a team that traveled and performed at schools across the country.

"It's a cultural program," said Anthony Wright, Li's court-appointed defense attorney. "Chinese folks get to come over here and learn about America."

But the acrobats, prosecutors said, were forced to stay in Li's home, where up to six lived in each bedroom. Most had been brought to Las Vegas months ago.

They told authorities that they were fed minimal amounts of instant noodles, rice and vegetables twice a day. They said they sometimes had to perform twice a day, were awakened early and didn't get to go to sleep until very late.

According to the complaint, Li confiscated visas and passports and told them their phone calls to home would be monitored. One teen told authorities he feared for the safety of his family in China, and that he had witnessed Hu beat another performer during a personal dispute, according to the complaint.

The story of Madeleine McCann, like so many other stories of abducted children, has captured headlines because it's every parent's nightmare. Today's news about her is surprising though. French police are admitting she may have been abducted by an Eastern European gang that deals in child slaves (see Police Probe Link Between Madeleine and Trafficking Network).

The abduction of Madeleine McCann may be linked to a trafficking network that sees children put on the market for $14,000, detectives have said.

Officers in France say Eastern European gangs are holding auctions in supermarket car-parks in Portugal and France. They have released details of the trade, as they believe it may be related to the four-year-old's disappearance, a Sky source said.

In one recent case, the mother of a baby boy was arrested for attempting to sell her baby North of Lisbon. In addition, two Romanian couples were arrested in a supermarket car park North of Bordeaux while attempting to sell a girl.

While nothing good comes from human trafficking, I hope this particular story about Madeleine gets some serious air time and I hope journalists move past just the "true crime" angle of child abductions and into the organized crime networks that trade slaves in a manner that dwarfs the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

A UN training manual to help police around the world combat the scourge of human trafficking is being developed with the assistance of the RCMP.

The UN estimates that more than 700,000 people a year, mostly women and children, are victims of the crime.

The police manual will help teach officers in 192 countries how to identify and interview victims of human trafficking, and how to protect them.

Is this the same U.N. that had a Child Refugee Sex Scandal in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea? Is it the same U.N. who's own "peacekeepers" have failed to be prosecuted for "sex offenses ranging from rape to assaults on minors"? Is this because they did such a good job in the Congo?

Maybe the Canadians are far more trusting, but I have seen little evidence that the U.N. does more than sit in a big room trying to pass resolutions while their own peacekeepers destroy lives. To expect the U.N. to do anything tangible against human trafficking is a joke at best, and at worst it will cost lives until real governments with the power to do something take action.

A Queens, N.Y., man was sentenced to serve 38 months in prison for attempting to recruit a Korean woman whom he believed to be a minor to work as a prostitute, the Justice Department announced today. Do Hyup Baewas also ordered to forfeit $50,000 to the government for his role in the trafficking scheme.

Bae previously pleaded guilty on Jan. 12, 2007, to charges relating to the operation of a network of over 25 Korean-owned brothels that were located throughout the northeastern part of the United States, including New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Several of these brothels were located in Queens, N.Y.

This is the just the tip of the perverted iceberg, I'm sure. These modern-day slave-traders seem to be all connected. I wonder how these connections trace back to Korea's organized crime and then to their own foreign connections.

Nationally the illegal immigration debate goes something like this:

"Secure our borders!"
"Racist!"
"Enforce existing laws!"
"Racist!"
"Illegal immigrants put a strain on our country!"
"Racist!"

You get the idea.

People who support illegal immigration just throw out the racist argument to derail any legitimate issues. So what the American public is left with is a lack of understanding of how intermingled illegal immigration is with other criminal activities, human trafficking included.

Human trafficking is tied at the hip with illegal immigration. Even the Macedonian Prime Minister gets it:

Rule of law and fight against organised crime, including trafficking in human beings are Government's top priorities, said Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski at Thursday's conference entitled Defining the Concept of Human Trafficking Victim. – This phenomenon, said Gruevski, is one of the most ruthless forms of violating basic human rights and freedoms. – Human trafficking is a global health risk, which complements other kinds of organised crime. Human trafficking does not recognise borders, religions or nations, he said.

Additional problem, according to Gruevski, is the constant alteration of the manners in which these criminal activities operate. – Thus, cooperation is necessary not only at international level, but also effective and systematic coordination at national level among all relevant governmental institutions and NGOs. In order to accomplish this goal, the Government of the Republic of Macedonia has established National Commission for Combating Human Trafficking and Illegal Migration, said Gruevski.

While articulated perfectly by Prime Minister Gruevski, these comments go largely ignored by the American public because he is not Anna Nicole Smith or part of the Iraqi death toll. There estimates as high as 4,000,000 people each year are trafficked. This problem is much more wide-spread than the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and yet there is very little in the news covering it.

Looking at the UN statistics, it occurred to me that as wide spread as this problem is, governments can only have two positions: they can be complicit in the trafficker's actions or they don't have the means, resources, or the will to fight it. I believe the U.S. is the latter. If so many illegal aliens are crossing the border, then obviously the border too porous to prevent human traffickers from crossing, too. In addition, since human trafficking is so profitable for the traffickers, it's linked to terrorism and organized crime worldwide. It all boils down to enforcing the law and providing excellent border security.

These people who cry "racist" with regards to illegal immigration are political and don't really care about the people involved. The reality of human trafficking, in my opinion, easily trumps the racist argument and any justification for having open borders. Then when you mix that with the increased crime rate, drug trafficking, tax burden, and terrorism, I don't see how supporting secure borders is in any way racist.

This bought another crime into the scope of the investigation—human trafficking.

West Africa is one of the areas that are the most exploited by criminals who sell people into modern-day slavery. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), some 200,000 children are trafficked out of western and central Africa each year. UNICEF defines child trafficking as the transportation and exploitation of unwilling or unknowing children, often for slave labor or sex work.

Police now suspected that Adam was brought to the U.K. by a child-smuggling ring, but not as child labor. Adam had been earmarked for human sacrifice. To find out why and by whom, murder squad detectives traveled to Nigeria and the city of Benin. They were beginning to close in on Adam's witchcraft killers, thanks to the clues revealed by forensic science.

Chilling. According to the program, at least 300 children are suspected to be murdered in Nigeria each year for the purposes of ritual magic.

So far the police have broken up a human trafficking ring and imprisoned the traffickers. However, underreported and largely ignored by the general public, today's slavery is as savage and horrifying as ever as this particular case indicates.