Four detained in Romania over enslaved German teens

Prosecutors with Romania's Directorate for Investigating of Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) have apprehended four people, including a German citizen, in a case in which a group is accused of forcing young Germans to perform exhausting physical labour in the households of some locals, under the pretext of so-called "re-education programme."

According to DIICOT officials, other members of the group are to be put under court supervision.

DIICOT claims that, between 2014 and August 2019, eight suspects, including two German citizens, husband and a wife, set up an organised crime group mainly for trafficking young people of German citizenship aged between 12 and 18 years in the Romanian county of Maramures with under the guise of carrying out authorised activities of educational services aimed at their social recovery and reintegration under programmes and projects carried out and co-ordinated by the two suspects of German nationality.

Some of the abused minors have been identified and entrusted for temporary institutionalisation to the Maramures General Directorate for Social Assistance and Child Protection.