DUBAI // A couple who locked up a 12-year-old girl and her 16-year-old sister and forced them to have sex with men were each jailed for three years yesterday.
ZZ, 40, a prostitute, and MY, 25, a carpenter, both from China, imprisoned the two German girls in a flat in Al Rafaa, Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance was told.
The sisters were beaten up and forced to have sex for money.
The Chinese couple denied prostituting the girls and running a brothel.
Prosecutors said the victims' father met a Chinese woman, LY, in Umm al Qaiwain in 2004. She became a close friend of the family and he asked her to take his daughters to Dubai to live with her. The sisters were forced into prostitution in 2009 by LY, who remains at large.
Last year the 12-year-old girl was sold for Dh100,000 to an Indian man who had previously paid to have sex with her.
The older girl was taken to a different flat. On June 22 last year she escaped and fled to Ajman to search for her sister.
She discovered the telephone number of the man who bought her younger sister, called and arranged a meeting in Deira. When she arrived, she was kidnapped and imprisoned by ZZ and MY.
The older girl said ZZ was running the ring and working as a prostitute along with two other women, while MY was in charge of securing the apartment and providing customers in return for a monthly salary of Dh2,500.
Both ZZ and MY were also found guilty of overstaying their visas in the country and failing to pay related fees to the Dubai Naturalisation and Residency Department.
ZZ admitted working as a prostitute.
