Six Italian men ultimately served prison sentences for the murders, but many more Africans were arrested and either jailed or deported during the subsequent riots, which also assured the Camorra that while the authorities may turn a blind eye to their activity, they still won’t tolerate an uprising by immigrants.
Eventually the security forces cleared out and the Nigerian criminal gangs went back to trafficking drugs, but not before forging an uneasy alliance with the Camorra that has held despite conventional wisdom that two such powerful and deadly groups cannot work together. The Camorra, having done the killing, was still in charge, and the fact that retaliation for the act was worse for the African community in terms of deportations and arrests meant that the Nigerians had to concede that the Italian criminal group was more powerful.
The deal they forged was simple. In essence, so long as the Nigerians didn’t infringe on the Camorra’s established clientele and promised to pay a hefty sum of protection money, no one else would get killed. Any missteps would result in another massacre. The money paid for protection meant that the Nigerian gangs had to come up with another form of revenue that didn’t eat into their drug trafficking profits. The obvious choice was expanding sex trafficking and debt bondage. They wouldn’t be able to exploit Italians or other Europeans, so they exploited their own co-nationals.
The Nigerian women who had come during the early 1980s and 1990s and who were working as prostitutes before the rampant sex trafficking rings were set up teamed up with the Nigerian drug lords to develop the sex slavery scheme that exists today.
With more and more sex workers on the Via Domitiana word soon spread and the area became a magnet for clients looking for cheap sex with black women, which, in a predominantly white mono-cultural society like Italy, was seen as extremely exotic to the Italians, if not taboo. Clients didn’t fit any particular character profile. They ranged from young adolescent boys too shy to find girlfriends to old men with wives at home. Businessmen from Naples and Rome came for the sex as well, and soon sex tourists from northern Europe came to stay in the cheap hotels that were popping up along the street.
After the Ob Ob Exotic Fashions tailor shop massacre, the madams, working with human traffickers in Nigeria who were able to tap into the smugglers’ network through the Sahara Desert and across the Mediterranean Sea, came up with a payment-plan option of sorts, and soon those who couldn’t afford the smuggling charges to get out of Nigeria were told that they could pay it back when they got to Italy, unaware that by the time they arrived the fee would reach €60,000 or more. Most migrants were landing in Southern Italy, where the Nigerian gangs ran the rackets, and so they had the most luck with their own country-women falling for their ruse. Because they were able to make so much money off each girl trafficked for sex, a system was put in place where women in Nigeria who were connected to the madams in Italy actively searched for the most vulnerable women to recruit. Some of the women harbored dreams of leaving Nigeria, where seventy percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day.47 Others had never even heard of Europe but were convinced they could have a better life after hearing false tales of success of how Nigerian women lived like queens there.
The alliance between the Camorra and the Nigerian gangs continues to hold, but police periodically break up plots by one group against the other. It may seem strange that authorities would spend time keeping peace among the gangs, but, in effect, the status quo keeps the powder keg of criminality from exploding into all-out warfare. Still, the peace is not easy.
The Nigerian gangs are also now considered among the recognized Mafia organizations in Italy. A court in Torino investigating drug and sex trafficking by groups that operate in Sicily and the Land of Fires says that Nigerian gangs operating in Italy are called the “Vatican Family” back home in Nigeria. The gangs originated in Nigeria in the country’s university systems, as fraternities, and quickly degenerated to become criminal groups. The gangs have a foothold in many other European countries and the United Kingdom as part of drug-trafficking rings, but their European home is in Italy where they can work with and off the extensive organized crime networks here.
Those who know how to tell the Nigerian gangs apart say the EIYE gang members wear black hats, the AYE wear blue and the Black Axe wear black and red ribbons. An emerging Maphite group, who wear red and green, are generally found near the northern city of Turin. The Black Axe gang was the first to come to Italy, offshoots of a group that originated in rebellious university communities in Nigeria. They focus mostly on trafficking both men and women and achieve this by making sure thousands of women arriving in Italy each year are turned into sex slaves and that the men are shepherded into the drug trade. They deal in heroin and cocaine as well, but their primary source of revenue is the sale of humans.
Until his arrest in March 2016, the leader of the Black Axe gang was a man named Ameyaw Bismark, who went by the name Kelly according to the Neapolitan tribunal document outlining his arrest.48 He was well-known for brandishing a lead pipe that he used on subordinate gang members and women who weren’t working the streets hard enough. He also carried a knife with a serrated blade that left such distinctive wounds on his victims that it acted as a calling card of sorts.
Kelly’s second-in-command was Bongo Issaka, and the two were caught on countless tapped cellphone conversations organizing a number of threats for extortion against local businessmen in the area. Just as the Camorra makes its money by charging legitimate Italians protection money, called pizzo, the Nigerian gangs have established their own system of profit-taking from the many African businesses that operate for the population in and around Castel Volturno. Their charges include a cut of the sidewalk rent the madams demand from the girls for their tiny spot on the pavement and hefty tariffs for those who operate grocery and clothing stores. Not every African in Castel Volturno is involved in criminality, but there are few who aren’t touched by it.
Many Nigerian men also end up in the Black Cats gang, which deals primarily with large orders of illicit drugs and the structural organization of the sex and drug trafficking trades. The organization has its roots in Nigeria, where the main boss is based, and helps facilitate the payment and transport of trafficked women so they don’t have to carry money across the desert. If the trafficked women are made to pay expenses upfront, they might be convinced they don’t owe their madams money when they get to Italy. Under the current organizational structure, the women rack up the transportation charges, which they promise to pay as part of their JuJu curse.
In Castel Volturno, the top boss of the Black Cats gang is said to be a woman who acts as a liaison between all the various groups and the madams whose profits financially support the overall criminal activity. The Black Cats run a series of businesses including bars and restaurants in the area that police keep under constant surveillance, even as they allow the criminal activity to continue.
Gang members don’t use cellphones for criminal business, but communicate primarily face to face or by walkie-talkie radio devices, which makes it hard for the police to monitor them. These gang members favor pistols and switchblades, but have been known to fight with axes. A faction of the gang has migrated to Palermo where they have forged similar ties with the Sicilian Cosa Nostra Mafia. There the mob won’t let them use firearms, so the gang members in the emerging Palermo racket can only fight with blades.
The police do intervene from time to time to show their power, but only when they are guaranteed to make the news. In one sting operation by local anti-drug police, a shipment of plaster Madonna figurines was confiscated after a tip-off that the religious icons were filled with crack from Thailand – which they were. The news went viral for obvious reasons.
In 2015, Collins Twumasi went to the police to try to get out of the EIYE gang, detailing for them some of the intricate workings of the organization in exchange for protection and travel documents to stay in Europe. He had tried to leave on his own, but he was beaten and taunted with the
tip of an axe, confirmed by his many scars. Twumasi had come to Italy by way of Lampedusa in August 2007 and was transferred to a refugee center in the southern Italian city of Crotone while he waited for his asylum request to be processed. It is illegal to work in Italy during the application-waiting period, but most refugees find odd jobs on the black market, often in the agriculture sector. During his search for a job, he met a man named Kennedy Osazi, who told him there was work in Castel Volturno. Even though his papers hadn’t been processed, he left the refugee camp and traveled south by train with Osazi, who he didn’t realize was a recruiter for the EIYE.
Once he arrived in Castel Volturno, Osazi told him about the EIYE gang, promising that if he passed the initiation, he could go to work pushing heroin. He’d be given control over a small territory and would have to take out a loan to buy his first supply, but after that, he’d be able to turn a profit, paying only a small fraction to the EIYE.
In time, Osazi told him, he would be able to “buy a girl in Africa and bring her here to earn even more money.” Twumasi, out of cash and no longer in line for legitimate documents, says he liked the idea, so he joined Osazi in his drug deliveries to learn the trade. After a few years, Twumasi developed his own customer base. He told police that many of the men purchased women destined for prostitution for as little as €5,000 while they were still in Nigeria and had them delivered to Castel Volturno by smugglers and where they could then be sold to the madams for larger profits, often for around €15,000. The women, he says, had no idea that they were being purchased like slaves. Once the men sold them off, the women would have to pay the madams between €30,000 and €60,000, depending on how much the madams had bought them for from the EIYE gang members.
All Twumasi had to do was come up with the €5,000 to buy his first sex slave. Twumasi soon hooked up with a network of female recruiters working in Nigeria, who charge a finder’s fee to locate suitable women for sex work, telling them that they will be hairdressers, if that’s the work they are doing in Nigeria, or babysitters if they are unemployed. It is up to the recruiter to determine how much the women have to promise to pay if they ask (many never do), but whatever it is, it is added to the €5,000 fee for getting the girls through Libya. The selling price often includes the added cost of the JuJu curse.
If a woman is particularly beautiful, they often pay less for travel because they will fetch more from the madams, though the men who buy them still pay the same original price. Pictures of the girls, often taken without their knowledge, are posted on private Facebook pages to help finalize the deals, Twumasi told police. The women are then given over to smugglers who are paid by the agents to take them across the Sahara Desert in vans and trucks. Once in Libya, they are sold again to another agent in the network who pays the smugglers to take them across the sea. The conditions are appalling, but the various agents who handle the women have to make sure that they make it to Italy alive, or they risk losing customers in the future.
The first woman Twumasi bought was Blessing Okoedion, a beautiful, statuesque woman who was working in Benin City as a computer technician when she met a recruiter. Blessing happened to be one of the first women I met at Casa Ruth. The recruiting agent, whom Blessing knew as Alice, found her through the local church where Blessing worshipped. She told Twumasi that because Blessing was educated, she was able to get her a falsified work visa through illicit channels to travel by air, which was not only cheaper than paying the smugglers for land and sea travel, it would ensure her arrival much faster than the six or seven months it often takes for the girls to arrive by the migrant trail.
Alice, the agent in Nigeria sent her first to Spain, as Twumasi tells the story, and then he had her moved to Italy. As Blessing tells the story, she planned to go to Spain after Alice promised her a job with her brother who owned a tech store there. Blessing was excited and set about preparing her documents in Nigeria, getting a certified copy of her diploma and applying for her first passport. Alice took care of the rest, including securing the visa that would allow her to enter Europe legally. But when Alice took her to get her visa in Lagos, the appointment was at the Italian embassy, not the Spanish one, which, at the time, didn’t raise a red flag for Blessing. Alice assured her that it was all the same, and that the Italian embassy was just more efficient. Anyway, it was a Schengen visa that would allow her to enter anywhere in Europe.
But when Blessing, accompanied by Alice, arrived at the airport in Benin City, the immigration agent told her the visa was fake. Alice intervened, speaking to the agent (whom she seemed to know) at length. Finally, Blessing was allowed to board the flight. She had a layover in Rabat, Morocco, and then flew to Valencia, Spain, where she passed through passport control without a problem.
She left the arrival terminal thanking God and Alice for the opportunity to start a new life in Europe. She told me she felt complete happiness at that moment. It wouldn’t last.
She was expecting to see Alice’s brother but, instead, recalls that a woman named Glory picked her up and took her to her house where there were already seven Nigerian women and girls in residence. She was given a room with a fourteen-year-old, a sixteen-year-old and a twenty-two-year-old, who had been there for a month. The morning after Blessing arrived, the oldest of the three left for France.
Blessing started to get concerned. She tried to call Alice in Nigeria, but could get no answer. She asked Glory time and again when she would meet Alice’s brother. Finally, Glory told her that Alice’s brother had opened a new store in Italy, near Naples, and Blessing would be going there to work. She would be leaving for Naples in the morning. Blessing was concerned about the sudden change, but she agreed to go. After all, she trusted Alice, a woman of God whom she had met at her church. It still had not crossed her mind that she was being trafficked for sex work.
She duly flew to Bergamo the next day and then took a train from Milan to Naples. Glory had arranged all the tickets in advance, and she gave Blessing the number of Alice’s brother to call when she arrived in Naples. The man, however, was not Alice’s brother. It was Twumasi. He drove her to Castel Volturno where he left her in an apartment with four other girls. She waited three hours and finally a Nigerian couple came to get her. What she didn’t know was that while she had been waiting, Twumasi had been selling her to her new madam, who had watched her arrive. Once in the car, a woman, who Blessing now thinks was a sort of fixer for the new girls who had just arrived, and a man, who was a guard to make sure she didn’t escape, asked Blessing for her phone to change the SIM card and offered to hold on to her documents for her. She naively handed them over.
Then she asked Blessing: “Do you know what you have to do?”
Blessing said: “Yes, I have to work.”
“Yes, you have to hunt men,” the woman said.
Blessing laughed. She still hadn’t caught on. “How do I do that without a pistol?” she asked, joking.
Then the woman explained that they would soon go shopping for some work clothes and that she had found her a place to work in the mornings, but that they were still looking for a spot for the evenings. Blessing still thought that she would be working in a computer shop.
“How much will I get paid?” she asked.
At this, the man in the car became angry and yelled at her, “We’re not paying you. You will be paying us €60,000, and to do that you will have to prostitute yourself.”
She wanted to run, but then she remembered that the woman had her phone and documents. Her dreams had been shattered and it was as if the weight of the world had suddenly fallen on her shoulders. The woman then took her to a Chinese shop to buy skimpy clothes. It was March and Blessing didn’t want to wear the short skirts and sandals the woman picked out. When she protested, the woman got angry. Soon, Blessing stopped arguing. They left the store and drove back to the apartment where Twumasi had originally left her.
There she met her real madam, whom she was told to call Madam Faith, and who explained to her the work
rules. First, she described the various types of police cars, and how she was supposed to run if any potential client opened their car doors, because it was probably an undercover cop. “Clients don’t open their doors,” Faith told her. She was supposed to charge at least €20 a person, though some might only pay €10 or €15. She must refuse nobody.
Blessing felt deaf, as if everything Madam Faith told her dissipated as soon as the words entered her ears.
She kept repeating that she had not come here to do that sort of work and that Alice in Nigeria had told her that she would be working as a computer technician. Madam Faith only laughed at her. “And you are a graduate,” she said, crushing Blessing’s confidence.
Madam Faith told her to hide her money in her boot or men who worked for other madams would pretend to be clients and try to steal it from her. She said to be careful if there was more than one person in a car, although not necessarily refuse them because she could charge per person, and that police don’t have to pay, especially if they become regular clients. She said not to become friends with the Russian, Ukrainian and Romanian women who worked on the perimeter of the Nigerian women’s area, and to let her know if she ever saw one on her section of sidewalk. She told her that if she was scared, she should carry a knife or be prepared to defend herself with a shard of glass. Blessing felt like she was in a nightmare.
She then told Blessing that she should bring clients to the connection house she would be living in, or she could go with them to a hotel, but in any case they had to pay €50 in advance, and that Blessing had to hide the money where they wouldn’t find it because, of course, they were always subject to being robbed. Madam Faith gave her a pay-as-you-go cellphone that didn’t have enough money on it to make outgoing calls but that she could top up when she started earning.
In addition, Blessing had to pay €150 a month for rental of her sidewalk space, which went directly to the Nigerian gangs with no markup for the madam. Her phone bill, rent and food would be extra. She was told she had to pay €200 a month for her room, €250 a month for utilities, and €50 a week for food. During the winter, she would pay €20 a week for heating. And, most importantly, if she got caught, Blessing should never denounce her or she would come and kill her.
Roadmap to Hell Page 13