KARAVLASI, Bosnia — A teenage German woman has been rescued from a Bosnian couple who are accused of starving and beating her for years and of harnessing her to a horse cart and making her pull it.
The 19-year-old, kept in a hamlet near the northeastern town of Kalesija since 2004, had been taken to safety and the couple had been detained for investigation, regional prosecutors said yesterday.
Damir Arnautovic, a spokesman for the prosecution in Tuzla, told Television the woman had been in a bad physical and psychological state and had no papers. She was not named.
He said Milenko Marinkovic, 52, and his wife Slavojka, 45, had been detained on suspicion of treating the woman in an inhuman way.
The woman’s German mother had once been married to Marinkovic, although the woman had a different father. Her mother still lives in the hamlet and told reporters there to go away. — Reuters
