They used to recruit dozens of women including minors as prostitutes in Saudi Arabia with the help of Saudi collaborators.
The network exploited the Umrah season to send Egyptian prostitutes to the Kingdom, said a source at the Egyptian Consulate General’s office in Jeddah.
“The suspects married the girls off to Egyptian accomplices in order to facilitate entry to the Kingdom. The men would divorce the girls after they arrived in the Kingdom and then their illicit activities would begin,” the source told Arab News on Monday.
Some of the suspects have been arrested and investigations are under way both in the Kingdom and Egypt.
“The suspicion of security officials at Cairo International Airport was aroused when they noticed that some young women were frequently traveling to the Kingdom and getting divorced every time they traveled,” he said. Deeper investigations into their journeys revealed their link to a cross-border prostitution ring and led to the arrest of five of their accomplices. So far only Egyptians have been arrested.
An Egyptian daily reported recently that the public prosecutors claimed the owner of the parlor enlisted the cooperation of his sister and wife to lure young women and send them to the Kingdom to work as prostitutes.
The media reports also said one of the arrested women, Umm Jamal, used a forged identity paper of her elder sister when traveling to the Kingdom.
Egyptian police have requested the help of Interpol to arrest all the suspects who are believed to have escaped to various countries.
