The Mossos d'Esquadra in Barcelona, in a file image.Albert Garcia
The Mossos d'Esquadra have arrested a father accused of trying to forcefully marry his 19-year-old daughter against her will, locking her in her room and forcing her to falsely denounce her current partner for sexist violence.
The man was arrested at the police station on Friday, where he went with the young woman with the intention of accusing her boyfriend.
In a separate conversation with her public defender, the woman explained that it was actually her father who had threatened to send her to Pakistan, where he already had a husband for her.
The father was finally arrested and is free with charges, with a restraining order from the young woman for the crimes of forced marriage, threats and illegal detention.
The visit to the Catalan police took place on Friday morning.
The father appeared together with the young woman at a Barcelona police station, according to police sources.
There she communicated that she wanted to denounce her boyfriend for sexist violence.
As is always done in this type of case, the Mossos d'Esquadra offered him the possibility of notifying a public defender.
When the lawyer went to the police station, the woman asked to speak to her alone.
There, according to those same sources, she explained the real ordeal that lived in her house, starring her father, her brother and her mother, all originally from Pakistan, where culturally there is the practice of marriages. arranged.
The young woman said that she had a boyfriend with whom her family wanted her to break up at all costs.
With that objective, they kept her in her room, not letting her out of it and subjecting her to strict control.
If she wanted to end the confinement, the woman said that her parents made it a condition that she denounce her partner.
And they assured, according to her story, that if she did not do so, they would send her to Pakistan, where they had also arranged her marriage with a man from there online.
The young woman's story to the lawyer completely changed the perspective that the Mossos d'Esquadra had until then.
The woman's father ended up arrested, and they also charged her brother and mother with the same crimes of illegal detention, forced marriage and threats.
The father was handed over to the duty court and was released on charges with a restraining order from the young woman, according to police sources.
She no longer lives with her parents.
The police activated all the protection resources for the victim, who now resides in a place they have not specified to guarantee her anonymity and safety.
Last May, two sisters aged 24 and 21, residents of Terrassa (Barcelona), were murdered in Pakistan after refusing to go ahead with the marriages the family had arranged for them.
The case brought to the surface other possible cases of forced marriages in Catalonia.
The most serious, that of a minor who went to the El Raval Mossos police station at dawn and told that her family had already chosen a husband for her in Bangladesh against her will and even had a scheduled flight.
The minor was protected by the Generalitat.
Catalonia has a specific police protocol for the detection of forced marriages.
Since 2009, the Catalan police have assisted 194 women, 101 of them minors.
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