Iran - Friday 27 October 2000 - Agence France Presse

TEHRAN, Oct 27 (AFP) - Iranian police have broken up a network smuggling runaway girls into Persian Gulf states that was led by a woman who sold her own daughter into slavery, a newspaper reported Thursday.

Ringleader Azar Dakht, 57, confessed to setting up her human chattel business four years ago after pocketing 40,000 dirhams (11,000 dollars) by selling her daughter to a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, the Jam-e-Jam paper said.

It said Dakht "hunted down runaway girls" and then sold them in "neighbouring Persian Gulf states."

Police discovered the ring after coming across a "house of corruption" in Tehran, where young women were being sexually abused, while investigating the disappearance of a 16-year-old, the paper said.

Dakht is expected to be sentenced to 10 years in prison at the end of the trial, it said, as Tehran deals with a mounting problem of female runaways.

A government newspaper said earlier this month that one young woman in Tehran is now raped and murdered every six days as criminals take advantage of runaways, mostly young women unhappy at home.