‘Human traffickers threatened to sell my body parts – eerie voice saved me’ | World | News

As the former communist state of Yugoslavia disintegrated throughout the 1990s, rival warlords battled for control in a succession of brutal conflicts. With no functioning government in place, the region descended into lawlessness, leaving thousands dead or forced from their homes.

Against this devastating backdrop, Lurata Lyon fled her native Serbia, finding herself destitute on the streets of Kosovo at just 17 years of age. For a time, she was sheltered by two UN peacekeepers who bent regulations to provide her with accommodation.

However, on one fateful day, a simple trip out to purchase something to read ended in catastrophe when she was seized by a ruthless Albanian human trafficking gang.

Speaking to award-winning journalist Marina van Zeller, Lurata recounts how the gang snatched off the street – and she only made her escape after apprantly receiving a message from beyond as she prayed.

She explained how the gangsters grabbbed her while she was out shopping: “This black van, like a people-carrier, pulled in front of me… two guys jump out, they grab me under my armpits, put something over my head, and they shove me on the on the floor and they close the door.”

Lurata recalls how she could hear the Albanians discussing her in the most degrading terms as the vehicle travelled along the road, before she was hauled out and forced to kneel before the gang’s ringleader.

Still disoriented and struggling to comprehend her situation, Lurata looked up to find a man looming over her. At that moment, she recalls, he issued a chilling command to his associates: “Flip her over, boys, I want to watch the rape.”

As the attackers began to tear at her clothing, a petrified Lurata pleaded with them to stop.

She said: “I’m screaming. I’m looking at the ceiling. I’m screaming. I’m crying. Please don’t do this. I’m a virgin.”

Those final words changed everything. The gang leader abruptly ordered his men to stand down.

“I’m crying. I’m hysterical. I’m shaking,” Lurata said. “I’m all naked. I’m pinned down. He said, ‘Did you not hear her? She’s a virgin’.”

With evident distress in her voice, Lurata told Mariana what the gang boss told his minions: “We’ve stumbled across a huge cargo.”

As a teenage virgin, Lurata represented enormous value to human traffickers.

However, she says, she first had to be “trained” in what would be expected of her by her eventual buyer. She describes being forced at gunpoint to witness other captive women being violated before her eyes.

She recalled: “I was made to watch other girls being brought in unconscious. They were raped, gang-raped. I was sick the whole time. Physically sick because it was just revolting.”

The traffickers appeared to take a warped satisfaction in her suffering. In a calculated attempt to crush Lurata’s resolve, they told her precisely what fate awaited her.

She continued: “They said, ‘Listen, you need to learn. So, you need to watch and this is what we’re doing.'”.

“They said ‘You’ll be sold to the highest bidder, and then when they’re done with you, you go into general prostitution and then your organs will be harvested. So give up.”

When the gang decided Lurata had learned enough, they shipped her back to Albania, passing through several UN checkpoints but warning her that if she cried out she would be immediately shot.

Due to an essential border crossing being closed, the gang were forced to alter their plans at the last moment. At one stage they stopped at a bar to eat, and Lurata briefly considered whether she might be able to alert the staff to her kidnapping.

Although the bar staff appeared to recognise that these men were too dangerous to challenge directly, Lurata believed that at least one of them must have contacted the authorities once the group had departed. She continued: “I think that once we left, somebody took it upon on themselves to to alarm either the police, or somebody.”

Shortly after that rest stop, the gang leader received a phone call that appeared to alter his intentions. She recounted: “The boss get a call and he said, ‘Oh, what? Really? …OK, well, she’s more trouble than she’s worth.'”.

“He looked at me with so much anger and said ‘Everybody, we need to to evacuate. We need to go.”

And he calls over one of the guys and said; “You. Rape her, kill her. I don’t care what you do with the body’.”

Left alone with the sole remaining gang member, Lurata begged to be permitted to pray one final time. The thug, who appeared to be the youngest and least seasoned of the group, told her he needed to use the toilet and left her unattended.

At this point, something truly chilling unfolded. Lurata recalled: “As I’m lying there on the floor and and praying to God, I I had this hallucination. I really genuinely heard someone speaking to me and saying ‘Turn around’.”

Lurata glanced behind her to discover, astonishingly, that the gangster had left a pistol and a set of keys on a table nearby. Too frightened to touch the weapon, she seized the keys and, gripped by sheer terror, crept out of the flat.

After struggling with the complex locks, Lurata managed to make her escape. She added: “I went just flying down the stairs. I didn’t touch the floor. I felt like I had wings… I felt like I was being dragged by angels.”

She could hear the Albanian gangster pursuing her down the stairwell, and just as she reached the street he caught up and struck her with such force that she collapsed to the ground. Desperately frightened, Lurata cried out for help and, remarkably, an off-duty police officer heard her screams.

A brief exchange of gunfire followed before the officer managed to summon backup. “He grabbed me, dragged me back to the car, opened the door, the driver’s door, and he reached in for a walkie-talkie, which was connected to the actual car,” she said.

Within minutes, UN troops had surrounded them and Lurata was out of danger. She subsequently endured a further kidnapping ordeal in the lawless Balkans, yet today she is an author, human rights advocate and motivational speaker.

She uses her platform to recount her harrowing personal story, raising awareness of human trafficking and modern slavery.