TEHRAN, April 27: An Iranian court has sentenced a group of 53 tribesmen to a total of 281 years in prison for luring scores of destitute young girls to work as sex slaves in Pakistan.

A senior court official in Mashhad said the gang, mainly members of an Afghan Baloch tribe living as refugees in Iran, had been handed sentences ranging from lashes to 15 years imprisonment after being found guilty of charges including abduction and slavery.

The gang, backed up by several Iranian accomplices, were caught seeking out poor families around Mashhad and offering to marry young girls, some as young as 12.

The girls were then whisked away from Iran’s northeast to Afghanistan and then Pakistan, where they were put to work in brothels.

“This was a horrible thing to do, and that is why they were given the maximum penalty,” said the official.—AFP