| Man "keeps slave" in Croatian town |
| 21 July 2008 | 20:12
| Source:
FoNet |
POREČ --
Police in Poreč, Croatia, have a man in custody accused of enslaving his 23-year-old victim.
A police statement today said that the suspect is a Macedonian citizen, identified as Šeip Refiki, and that he subjected the victim, a Bosnian man, to a relationship that amounted to slavery.
The victim was tortured in a farm near Starići, close to Poreč, in the Croatian region of Istria. When in February of this year he arrived to Refiki's house, he was stripped of his personal documents, beaten on a daily bases, with freedom of movement restricted.
Local media say that the victim told the police the 29-year-old Refiki also subjected his family members to similar abuse.
The young man lived for months in conditions described as inhumane, in a wooden hut with no electricity or running water, starved and forced to hard labor. Several days ago he used a cell phone to call the police and seek help.
"Officers determined the young man's location and advised him to sneak out and go to a path close to the farm, where they collected him," Istria's Criminal Police Sector Chief Dragutin Cestar confirmed.
Municipal Prosecutor Davorka Smoković said the victim, after passing by his tormentor before entering a courtroom, "shook with fear the whole time that he spent making his statement before a judge".
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