As many as 24 men allegedly kept as slaves in a U.K. Travelers’ camp have been rescued after a police raid.
The men, the majority of whom were British, were kept in squalid conditions in the Green Acre caravan park, near Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, eastern England.
Some had been forced to live in dog kennels, while others lived in horseboxes and old caravans.
They were threatened with violence if they tried to escape and some had endured captivity for as long as 15 years.
Around 200 officers participated in a dawn raid on Sunday, in which four men and a woman were arrested. They are currently being questioned with alleged slavery offenses.
“The men we found at the site were in a poor state of physical health and the conditions they were living in were shockingly filthy and cramped,” said Detective Chief Inspector Sean O'Neil, from the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire major crime unit, in a statement released to media.
“We believe that some of them had been living and working there in a state of virtual slavery, some for just a few weeks and others for up to 15 years.”
The men were put to work in manual labor jobs, such as laying driveways or paving slabs. They were not paid for their work, police said.
“They’re recruited and told if you come here we‘ll pay you £80 (US$125) a day, we’ll look after you give you board and lodgings,” said O’Neil.
“But when they get here, their hair is cut off them, they’re kept in in some cases (in) horseboxes, dog kennels and old caravans, made to work for no money, given very, very small amounts of food.
“That’s the worse case. Some are treated a little bit better, but they were told they could not leave and if they did they would be beaten up and attacked.
“But in fact some people did leave and told us what was going on and when we looked back since 2008 we were aware of 28 people who had made similar accusations.”
Travelers are an ethnic group similar to Gypsies and Roma. The Daily Mail newspaper reported that the caravan park was a “long-established Gypsy site.”
