Spanish police break up gang accused of forcing migrants into slave-like work

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MADRID, Dec 4 (Reuters) – Spanish police have dismantled a crime ring accused of bringing in hundreds of foreign migrants irregularly to work at farms across eastern Spain in what the Interior Ministry described as inhumane, slave-like conditions.

Officers have arrested 11 people and identified more than 300 potential victims, many of them from Nepal, the police said in a statement. They had entered the Schengen area on tourist visas before being taken to rural areas in provinces such as Alicante, Valencia and Zaragoza.

Police also seized cash, forged documents and phones in raids in the southeastern Albacete province.

Migrants were packed into poorly ventilated rooms, sleeping on the floor and paying excessive fees for rent, transport and even food, police said.

Some worked up to 12 hours a day and, in many cases, received no wages at all — conditions that rights groups typically characterise as forced labour.

At least one Nepalese man died in one of several accidents involving vans used to transport the migrants despite lacking basic safety standards, police said.

(Reporting by Jesus Calero, editing by Andrei Khalip and Ed Osmond)