2024-03-27 06:07:54
The court of the Italian city of Taviano sentenced Marijan Chakarov (48) to 12 years in prison.
Together with two other Bulgarians and an Italian, he was accused of trafficking young Bulgarian women to the Apennines, of exploiting them as prostitutes and of extortion. According to the prosecutor, the Bulgarian acted together with his wife Sevdalina Denislavova (31), who was sentenced to 6 years in prison and a 1000 euro fine. Dobrin Borisov (29) received the same punishment, and the Italian Angelo Manzo (62) from Taviano was sentenced to 5 years.
There are nine women believed to have been exploited as prostitutes in Puglia – between Lecce and Taviano. In 2020, thanks to the complaint of two of them to the police, the investigation against the gang began.
“He cut my hand with a knife and burned me with a cigarette”, said one of the Bulgarian women about the cruelties to which she was subjected by the boss of the gang, Mariyan Chakarov. He did this when she didn’t work because she felt bad. As a result, the woman had scars on her hand. On July 11, 2020, one of the victims of trafficking went alone to the police in Taurisano to ask for help. She told how a year ago she was brought to Italy from Bulgaria by a man of Turkish origin called Moni. He took her to an apartment in the city of Lecce and then to Taviano. He told her that she should prostitute herself and then give him what she earned. He threatened her that “otherwise he will cut off her head”. He beat her many times, leaving marks of cruelty on her body. The woman sometimes gave the boss 1,000 euros a day from what she earned on the street, where she was taken every morning at 8 a.m. She received from him only 1 euro a day and cigarettes, and very often – and hits with a stick.
A few days after the first woman in the police in the nearby city of Gallipoli, another Bulgarian woman went to seek help. She said that she was beaten with a belt when she asked to get back the passport that had been taken from her by the gang. Her two-year-old son, who was entrusted to a relative of the torturer of the condemned, was also taken from her.