Enfield Man Jailed For Running Prostitution Racket

A 26-year-old pimp has been jailed for running a prostitution racket using trafficked women.

Mentor Brahimi, from Lancaster Road, Enfield, was sentenced to five years for trafficking women and four years imprisonment for controlling prostitution.

Brahimi, who appeared at Southwark Crown Court on Monday, was also sentenced to three years for possessing cocaine and a year for money laundering to run concurrently.

The court heard a 19-year-old Romanian woman was brought into the country by a gang of traffickers, and forced to work in prostitution.

However, Brahimi's wife lured the woman away from her captors with the promise of escape. Instead she was held captive for a month at Brahimi's Enfield address and forced to pay her way through selling her body.

Eventually, on April 23 2008, she escaped and alerted police. Officers from the Clubs and Vice Unit carried out a four-week proactive operation before raiding Brahimi's address. Half a kilo of cocaine was found inside his wardrobe.

When interviewed Brahimi claimed he was a painter and decorator and had done some building work but failed to provide police with any evidence of this or account for his £850 rent and £400 car rental.

Detective Constable John Vandergrift of Clubs and Vice, said: "Brahimi subjected a young and vulnerable woman to repeated sexual abuse to line his own pocket. To exploit a woman who had already been trafficked over from Romania to work as a prostitute shows cruelty in the extreme."

Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Martin, also said: "This was a thorough investigation which has stopped the activities of a man who saw his victim as a means to an end, a way to make money, and nothing else."

(JM)