Speaking at a press conference in the northern Kazakh regional capital of Petropavlovsk, the head of the local regional police department, Yuriy Batyrev, announced on September 21 that a new effort to combat human trafficking resulted in the arrest of group of local residents on charges of trafficking minors, Interfax-Kazakhstan reported. The criminal case stems from an August 2007 incident involving the group's attempted trafficking of two female minors, intended to send them "to a southern CIS country" before they were to be eventually "dispatched to the United Arab Emirates with the purpose of sexual exploitation." In a related announcement, the regional prosecutor's office also reported that two women, engaged in recruiting children aged 12-13 for sexual exploitation, were sentenced to seven-year prison sentences for trafficking minors, illegally depriving them of freedom, recruiting people for exploitation, and forcing them into prostitution. The arrests and convictions are part of a larger Kazakh effort to crack down on human trafficking. RG Published in: Kazakh Police Launch Crackdown on Human Trafficking, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 24 September 2007.
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