Authorities in Athens apprehended and questioned two Romanian citizens, a 37-year-old woman and a 25-year-old man, the Greek Kathimerini has reported.

Both Romanians are suspected of running a criminal organisation that recruited foreign women – by any means necessary – and forced them into prostitution. Meanwhile, the police operation continues because two other prominent members of the slave ring, a 28-year-old Romanian woman and a 25-year-old Italian man, are currently on the run.

This is the latest strike against the country's slave trade. The operation was mounted after Greek authorities were contacted by a 25- year-old female who had been forced into the sex slave industry, but had managed to escape.

According to a police report, the ring had smuggled the women into Greece before, using violence and threats to hold them hostage in an apartment in the central district of Aghios Panteleimonas.

Trafficking of women and young girls for the sex industry has become an all too familiar trend, increasing substantially in Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries since the fall of communism. Women and girls from rural areas, small cities and orphanages are particularly vulnerable to these organised rings.

On April 17 2009, four Bulgarian citizens were arrested in northern Greece on suspicion of human trafficking.

The four suspects had attempted to sell a 34-year-old Bulgarian woman for 2000 euro to undercover Greek police officers in the town of Kilkis. The undercover officers had presented themselves as owners of nightclubs.

The rendezvous where the exchange was scheduled to occur early on the morning of April 15 was a junction on the Kilkis – Neo Petrici road, near the Bulgarian border.