It was a tip from a Bosnian brothel patron that started it: The case was just one, perhaps one, among what United Nations and local authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina suspect is a widespread problem. But members of the U. The team works with specially chosen local police to combat trafficking.
They draw a distinction between prostitutes and trafficked girls: In the Balkans, they usually are taken from Romania, Moldavia and to a lesser extent Ukraine for work in brothels in the area and Western Europe. Normally, the STOP team conducts about raids on brothels or nightclubs annually. It can be discouraging work; with police corruption a problem in BiH, club owners have informants of their own. And even if the police involved in the raid are honest, the owners often pay local police to patrol near the club and warn of arriving raids.
Thus a typical raid usually nets an empty club with a few girls drinking at the bar, holding employment papers that identify them as dancers. The trafficked girls are usually gone.
Sarajevo compound, the U. We almost never get good intelligence on traffickers. The night raid tries to catch the bars engaging in prostitution and to disrupt customers and business operations. But de Lavarene wants to act quickly, while the tip is fresh, and by raiding the Florida Night Club by day, she hopes to find the bar owner off-guard and the girls sleeping.
Bosnian police fighting trafficking face constant death threats and intimidation from both mobsters and corrupt colleagues, and identification in the media would further add to the danger they face. The Bosnian team includes a handful of uniformed police, six local undercover officers -- big men in black leather jackets, black boots and blue jeans -- and representatives from the Bosnian Ministry of Internal Affairs, who will check the identification papers of the girls.
