KHUJAND, July 16, 2014, Asia-Plus -- Three women from Khujand, the capital of the northern province of Sughd are standing trial for sexual exploitation.

The trial began in the Khujand city court on July 14.  Two of them are charged with human trafficking (Article 130 (2) of Tajikistan’s Penal Code) and the third one is charged with not reporting crime to police (Article 347 (2) of Tajikistan’s Penal Code).

“They were attempting to traffic two local young women to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).  They promised the women jobs with good salary, but the women they recruited were actually intended for UAE brothels,” an official source at the Khujand city court told Asia-Plus in an interview.

According to him, they were detained at the Dushanbe airport.

We will recall that the Khujand city court last month sentenced two local women to eight years in jail for human trafficking.  The Khujand cit court on June 20 found Nargisakhon Usmonjonova, 33, and Manizha Rahimova, 27, guilty of using a Tajik woman as a sex-slave without her consent in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.  Investigators say the two women promised to find a good job abroad for the woman, brought her to Dubai and forcibly took her documents from her and sold her into sex-slavery for $7,000.

In February, the Khujand city court sentenced three local women to prison terms between 5 and 5 1/2 years after finding them guilty in exploiting local young women as prostitutes in the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.