U.K. police: Slavery suspects are from India, Tanzania

AP

LONDON (AP) — U.K. police said Saturday the two suspects in a major slavery case are from India and Tanzania and came to Britain in the 1960s.

Police believe two of the three women victims, who were allegedly held against their will for over 30 years, met the male suspect in London "through a shared political ideology and that they lived together at an address that you could effectively call 'a collective,'" said Commander Steve Rodhouse.

Police are investigating "the nature of that collective and how it operated," he said, without providing details about the collective or its ideology.

The two suspects, a male and a female, both aged 67, have been released on bail.

Rodhouse said police are beginning house-to-house inquiries seeking information from neighbors who live near the house where the women were held in the Lambeth area of south London.

He said police are working "to gain the trust and confidence of the highly traumatized victims" and said the process would take time.

"This must move at their pace, not anyone else," he said.

The disclosure Thursday that a 69-year-old Malaysian, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old Briton were freed after apparently spending three decades in captivity prompted a flurry of speculation and questions about how it went unnoticed for so long.

The arrests were made after the Irish woman phoned a charity last month to say she was being held against her will along with two others. The charity engaged in a series of secretive conversations with the women and contacted police. Two of the women eventually left the house, and police rescued the third.

The three women are receiving extensive counseling after their decades-long ordeal.