ROME (Reuters):
ITALIAN POLICE yesterday freed 113 Poles living "like slaves" in forced labour camps, where those refusing to work were raped, tortured with metal batons and attacked by dogs.
Authorities in both countries said that at least four workers had apparently committed suicide in the camps in Italy's southern region of Puglia, but those deaths were being investigated as suspicious.
"To call the situation revealed by the carabinieri investigation simply inhuman does in no way do it justice," Italy's national anti-Mafia prosecutor, Piero Grasso, told reporters in the southern city of Bari.
"We are talking about conditions similar to those of concentration camps where people were not only exploited for their work but also kept in a state of slavery," he said.
Twenty people were arrested for human trafficking in a joint operation in Italy and Poland, codenamed 'Promised Land', and police were looking for seven more people.
They were allegedly members of a criminal ring that recruited people in Poland through adverts in newspapers promising them a safe job as agricultural workers in Italy.
