Italian police on Wednesday arrested
four people in Novara in what they called the first Italian
probe into urban gangmastering.
Three Pakistani citizens and an Italian were taken into custody
on charges of recruiting foreigners abroad, mostly Pakistanis,
and forcing them to sleep in small, overcrowded rooms and work
for a pittance distributing leaflets in Piedmont, Lombardy,
Liguria and Val d'Aosta, working for as long as 17 hours
straight.
Police seized the old, rusting vans used to transport the men to
the cities here they carried out what police called £slave
labour".
Gangmastering is rife among crop pickers and other farm
labourers, mostly in southern Italy.
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