“The mother of a dear friend of mine named Blessing offered me to come and work in Italy, at Jessica’s who has a bar. The day before leaving I was subjected to a rito ju-ju by a native doctor (a holy man, ed) in a town near Benin City. Besides me there were Blessing and another girl named Glory never seen before. I was accompanied by my uncle. When we got there we were given some white robes to wear during the ritual. They made us gods small cuts on the forehead for take blood and they also took gods from us bits of nails hands. All three of us had to drink an alcoholic drink and eat a substance called cola. Then the other two girls ate a piece of heart of a hen just killed while my uncle did it in my place. With this ritual, all three of us were forced to swear to return the sum of 25 thousand euros to Jessica in Italy, working in her restaurant. In case we broke the oath we were told that we would be dead”.
It is the heartbreaking tale of one victim of trafficking to the district anti-mafia Directorate of Reggio Calabria. His name is confidential, because he still lives in a secure facility. Amadi (we will call it that) arrived in Reggio in 2014, after a journey in which she crossed the Niger desert up to Libya. Little more than a girl, at the age of 21, she crammed into a boat and tried to reach our country. Saved in the middle of the Mediterranean by a military ship, the girl escaped from the reception center thanks to the help of some compatriots. A few hours later she was already in Bari, where “Jessica’s bar” obviously didn’t exist. She was a “connection house”, A house where the girls used to come raped e hit. She too was forced into prostitution to pay off her debt. She failed to do so and she was also stolen a child, born of a rape suffered by Favor Obazelu. Obazelu, who calls himself “Fred” O “Friday“, Is one of the bosses of Nigerian mafia and head of a cult called the Supreme Vikings Confraternity. He organized everything, from the voodoo ritual to the journey of hope, up to the exploitation of Amadi’s body.
accuses him – With the accusations of reduction into slaveryhuman trafficking, kidnapping e sexual violencethe 43-year-old man was arrested in recent days by the police, who conducted the investigation coordinated by the deputy prosecutor of the DDA Sara Ameriothe prosecutor to whom the chief prosecutor of Reggio Calabria Giovanni Bombardieri entrusted investigations into the fight against immigration crimes. The precautionary custody order, issued by the investigating judge Vincenza Bellini at the request of the DDA, she was notified by the mobile team in the Agrigento prison, where “Friday” Obazelu has already been detained since 2019 because he was involved in the “Drill” investigation by the Bari prosecutor who accuses him of being part of acriminal association Of mafia mold called Cults. And the Nigerian mafia: the “Vikings”, in fact, are a sort of clan, they call themselves “the reds” and are “operational” – it is written in the papers of the DDA – “between Nigeria and Italy. And in particular in Reggio Calabria, Bari and other cities of Puglia ”. Obazelu is investigated together with his brother, Eghosa Osasumwen known as “Felix” who now lives in Germamia. With other individuals remaining unknown, found in Libya and Nigeria, both are accused of as well criminal association. According to prosecutor Amerio, the arrested Nigerian is the promoter of a transnational criminal organization that has recruited girls from their homeland to be taken to Italy by deception.
Travel – Amadi was one of them. Three other Nigerians, a man and two women, are being investigated for the harassment suffered. Starting from the minutes of the girl, now 28, the magistrates nailed “Friday” Obazelu who, during the interrogation under guarantee, defended himself by claiming that he had committed the crimes under the influence of alcohol. The reality, however, was different. Amadi revealed it to the investigators of the Reggio mobile team, led by Alfonso Iadevaia, whose story, according to the investigating judge Bellini, is fully reliable. His ordeal began in Nigeria the day after the voodoo rite: “Between May and July 2014, we left for Italy,” he recalled. “We did the first part of the trip with a bus. There were seven of us, three girls, me Blessing and Glory, and four boys including Eghosa (Friday’s brother, ed). After a very hard journey we arrived in Libya in Saba. Here we girls were separated from the boys and placed in a connection house where we were all raped and beaten by various men. We stayed in Saba for about a week and then we arrived in Tripoli, all seven together again. As soon as the weather conditions allowed it, we embarked on a large one dinghy along with many other people. We left for the open sea. After a few hours of navigation we were recovered from a ship which then landed us in Reggio Calabria ”.
Slavery – Placed in a reception center, the three girls and the boss’s brother managed to escape thanks to the intervention of the Nigerian mafia. Once in Bari, “during the first three days of their stay they have us dress, pettinato and made it more presentable “. Amadi understood the reason shortly thereafter when the maitresse “Jessica” made us prepare and we went out. She took us near some girls who were prostituting themselves. She told us here that she wasn’t there for us no work at the restaurant and that the only way we had to repay the debt we had contracted was to prostitute ourselves ”. The rules were clear and Amadi, a few years later, remembers them well: “he gave us the condoms and gave us the instructions on what to do. He told us that we would have to pay 150 euros per month for rent, 50-60 euros per month for food and 200 euros per month for joint (occupancy of the station). Anything extra I could earn was handed over to Jessica and Friday by way of repayment of my debt. At our initial resistance he beat us and threatened us saying that we would die as a consequence of the ju-ju rite to which we had been subjected if we did not keep our oath of repayment of the debt ”.
The abuses – The boss didn’t just prostitute Amadi, but he was sexually abusing of her and the other girls: “Taking advantage of Jessica’s absences to go to the hospital as she was ill, she raped both Glory and me on more than a few occasions. Two months after I arrived in Bari, I got pregnant with Friday ”. When they learned that Amadi was expecting a baby, he and his wife Jessica tried to get her to abort her by giving her “forty pills I don’t know what in the space of two days “. “Despite everything”, the girl continues in the report, “I have brought the pregnancy to term”. The child was born in the hospital in Bari, but “after a week I was sent back on the road to prostitute myself”. She also did it “during throughout pregnancy until the day I was hospitalized and had a caesarean section ”.
The clan – Seriously ill, Jessica died at one point: the place of the boss’s wife was then taken by Glory, one of the girls who arrived from Nigeria with Amadi. “Given my schedules, I don’t allowed to look after my son, it was Friday and Glory who took care of him. During my stay in Bari every now and then, often secretly with phones loaned by other girls who worked on the street like me, I was able to talk to my mother in Nigeria and she told me to stop with that life. I tried to tell Friday with the only result of being beaten and threatened ”. Within the connection house, moreover, Amadi attended the meetings of the Cults: “Friday is a leader of a cult indifferently called Arubaga or Vikings. During my stay in Bari I saw that every Sunday he received a large number of men with whom he met. They drank alcohol, sang and sometimes celebrated an entrance rite for new followers. During the rite, the aspiring adept was beaten and through a baby one finger cut they took some blood from it, which was diluted in drinks and drunk by those present. I don’t know what the purpose of this group is, but I know that if they violate the bond of secrecy they will be killed ”.
The kidnapping – In one of these meetings, in December 2015, Friday Obazelu “started to insult me and pushed me until I fell on the bed with the baby. The boys present then intervened in my defense. He got even more angry and sent them all away. He then he told Glory to take the baby and threw me out of the house and shut me out. ” After sleeping for a while at the train station, Amadi ended up first in Torinofrom a friend, and then to Palermo where it was exploited by other compatriots. The baby has always stayed in Bari with his father, the boss who also recognized him: “Friday called my mother and told her that if I had finished paying my debt I could have my baby back. I’m very afraid of not being able to see him again ”, Amadi vented at the end of the interrogation. Amadi’s son was born on 8 August 2015 and when he was taken from her he was four months old. He is now about six.