THREE women were charged late on Friday in connection with an alleged international prostitution ring suspected of trying to take 100 women from Senegal to Libya. The Senegalese government said this week that 100 women who were stopped from leaving Dakar to attend a cultural festival in Libya would have been victims of an international trafficking ring. Two young French women originally from Senegal, twins Nancy and Leila Campbell Badiane, were charged with procuring and were also accused of infringing United Nations conventions on trafficking in human beings, said their lawyer Boucounta Diallo. Senegalese designer Oumou Sy, well known in the fashion world, was charged with complicity, according to her lawyer Aissata Tall Sall. All three were imprisoned. An aircraft with 130 passengers on board, 100 of whom were “very beautiful, model-like” women, was prevented from taking off on Tuesday for Libya by gendarmes who suspected a prostitution racket. Sy was said to have selected the women for the two sisters who presented themselves as “cultural promoters” for Libya. Proclaiming her innocence, she would ask to be freed early next week, her lawyer said, while the lawyer for the “Campbell sisters” said the most important thing was to establish the facts and responsibilities both here and abroad. – AFP