A hospital nurse who used voodoo to traffic Nigerian prostitutes into Europe has been found guilty in the first case of its kind in Britain

Josephine Iyamu used a witch doctor to convince her victims that they were under her control and exploited them to fund a lavish lifestyle including jaunts to Europe and £700 designer shoes. The 53-year-old was a ringleader of an international human trafficking crime network and lived in a huge Nigerian mansion complete with a servants' quarters. Iyamu charged each of her victims Euro 30,000 and Euro 38,000 to arrange for their travel to Europe - profiting from more than Euro 15,000 from one victim alone via wire transfers and cash payments. She would first make the vulnerable women undergo Juju ceremonies which would involve them drinking blood containing worms and eating the heart of a chicken. The victims would then be forced to endure an arduous five day journey to the Libyan coast - which saw them shot at, ambushed and gang raped. They would then catch an inflatable boat crammed with hundreds of people to Italy before being moved into Germany to work as prostitutes.