A former Guinean president’s son and his wife accused of using a girl as a slave for almost 16 years were found guilty of forced labor.

The federal jury of eight women and four men also found Mohamed Toure and his wife, Denise Cros-Toure, 57, guilty of conspiracy to harbor an alien.


Former Guinean president’s son accused of enslaving girl for 16 years


But jurors found the couple not guilty on two other charges related to the case. Mohamed Toure was found not guilty of making a false statement to government officials.

A sentencing date for the Toures had not been set. They face a maximum of 20 years in prison on the forced labor charge.

Agents with the U.S. Marshals took the Toures into custody Thursday evening. They were released shortly after they were arrested in April.

Jurors also decided the Toures’ property would be forfeited because it was used to facilitate the commission of the crime.

The young woman from the West African country of Guinea who prosecutors say was the domestic servant of the Toures sat in a back row of the courtroom surrounded by federal officials. She was whisked away after the verdict was read.

Through the trial, defense attorneys argued the girl went on domestic vacations with the Toure family, left the home on her own, engaged in social media and even jogged in the neighborhood.

The girl who is now a young woman, identified in a federal complaint as female victim 1 or “FV-1” and later in the trial as Jenna, was born in Guinea and lived with her family in a one-room mud hut with a thatched roof and no electricity.

Her father was a farmer and her mother sold produce to support the family.

On occasion, the girl attended school and learned Malinke, a Guinean dialect, and some French. She did not know English, according to the federal complaint.

Toure and Cros-Toure are also from Guinea but have been permanent U.S. residents since 2005. Mohamed Toure is the son of Guinea’s first president, Ahmed Sekou Toure, according to the complaint.

The Toures are educated and had significant assets in the United States, but a federal investigation indicated they do not have jobs. They bought their Southlake home in 1991 for $370,000 and it’s now valued at $590,000, records show.

According to Texas Workforce Commission records, Toure has never worked in this country but has worked for a government party in Guinea. The records show his wife worked for Delta Air Lines from July 2005 to June 2006 and as a substitute teacher in the Carroll school district starting in 2016.

In January 2000, the couple and other people had arranged for the then-5-year-old girl, who did not speak English, to travel alone from her village in Guinea to Southlake, according to federal court documents. The girl escaped from the couple’s home in 2016 with the help of several former neighbors, according to federal court documents.

For the next 16 years, the couple required the girl to cook, clean, do yard work, paint, do the laundry and take care of the Toures’ five children without paying her, court documents say.

Source: https://jowanonline.net/former-guinean-presidents-son-accused-of-enslaving-girl-for-16-years/

We need to take somebody to court too in Nigeria

They have been sentenced to seven years of imprisonment, the same number of years that his father, Sekou Toure, sentenced Marie Lorofi, Camara Laye's girlfriend in The African Child who later on became his real life wife.

https://nypost.com/2019/04/23/suburban-couple-sentenced-for-forcing-girl-to-work-as-slave-for-16-years/

https://www.campboiro.org/victimes/camara_marie_lorofi.html