The Public Prosecution Service has demanded an 18-month prison sentence, including 6 months conditional, against a 29-year-old man from Rotterdam. He allegedly transported two minors to the Rotterdam port area so they could fetch drugs from containers. The Public Prosecution Service considers this criminal exploitation, a form of human trafficking.
On the night of August 9 to 10 this year, the suspect allegedly brought a 13-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy from Amsterdam to the Rotterdam port. He had contact with the two fetchers via Snapchat. The girls phone shows they were at the port to grab bags and that saying no was not an option. Money was promised but not given.
No drivers license
When the two minors left the area at 2:40 a.m., they were picked up again by the suspect signaling with his lights. Two minutes later, the suspect was stopped by police while driving, with the minor fetchers in his car. It also turned out the suspect did not have a drivers license.
Exploitation
The Public Prosecution Service mainly accuses the suspect of exploiting the two youths. Criminal exploitation occurs when the suspect recruits a victim intending to have the victim commit criminal acts from which the suspect can (substantially) profit.
Chats clearly showed the suspect knew what the children had to do at the port area and that they were very young fetchers. He referred to them as kids and a kamikaze action. Yet he picked them up from Amsterdam in the middle of the night, drove them to Rotterdam, and dropped them off at the port. Purely to enrich himself. This heavily influences the sentencing decision according to the Public Prosecution Service. The public prosecutor: “Minors – children – are easy victims: impulsive, suggestible, cheap, and above all replaceable. The perfect “foot soldiers” for criminals who prefer to stay out of sight and let the younger ones do the dirty work. The Public Prosecution Service believes this extremely reprehensible and worrying practice must be severely punished.
