Mother ‘lured teenage twin daughters to Dubai to work in massage centre’

A Pakistani mother and four men are charged with human trafficking at a Dubai court.

DUBAI // A mother lured her 15-year-old twin daughters to Dubai with the promise of a good education, but forced them to work in a massage parlour, a court heard on Monday.

One of the girls, M A A, said she lived with her six brothers, five sisters and stepfather in Pakistan. Her parents divorced and remarried before her mother moved to Dubai as a manicurist.

She brought the twins to Dubai when they finished Year 10.

The mother, S K, 37, and four men – O R, 25, M A, 22, F A, 22, and T A, 41 – all Pakistanis, have been charged at Dubai Criminal Court with human trafficking.

“We arrived in May 2014 at Sharjah International Airport,” the girl said.

They were taken to a flat in Al Raffa and forced to work in a massage parlour.

She said one day they refused to go to work and their mother and T A attacked them with a wooden rod all over their bodies.

“We were forced to go back to massaging men and pleasuring them,” she said. But prosecutors said the girls had not been forced to prostitute themselves.

The girl said that she found out her mother had married a man, aged 18, and was selling her body. Later, the twins and their mother returned to Pakistan.

“She assaulted our younger brothers and sisters and said she would hurt them if we did not return to Dubai, which we did,” M A A said.

She said her sister was sent home after she was raped but her own ordeal did not end until labour inspectors visited.

Only O R and M A were present to deny the charge. The others are still at large. The next hearing is scheduled for March 30.