Wednesday, June 17, 2020

A claim that up to 15 percent of U.S. sailors assigned to Bahrain were housing prostitutes in their off-post apartments

The Military Times has a long and detailed look at the prostitution scandal involving the U.S. Navy in Bahrain:
But in 2017, this alleged partnership between [the sailor] and [prostitute] — chronicled in the text messages she provided to NCIS — helped spark a web of investigations that revealed how deeply involved some U.S. sailors had become with the commercial sex trade in Bahrain.

Throughout the next year, those probes uncovered evidence that sailors were housing prostitutes in their taxpayer-funded apartments, seizing the women’s passports and taking a cut of the women’s earnings, profiting from a sex trade that serviced shipmates who lived on the island or came ashore during port calls.

...

The woman known as Lin Raiwest was far more than just another expat prostitute.

By the time her alleged scheme with Littlejohn collapsed in 2017, court records show Raiwest was a power player among some sailor circles in Bahrain.

Known for her amateur tattoo skills and a hard-partying lifestyle, the streetwise, imposing, at-times jewelry-draped young woman was a fixture in the off-duty underworld, a dolled-up socialite who lived just outside the gates of the Navy base in an upscale glass-and-concrete tower known as the Heavenly Plaza apartments.

...

But likely unbeknownst to her American acquaintances on the island, Raiwest had been an NCIS informant since 2014 and is designated under the code name MEBJ-1580 in agency and court records.

So while she continued her work as a prostitute and mamasan, Raiwest could also if needed turn to NCIS Special Agent Stanley Garland, the agent whom she’d known and secretly worked with for years.

“This is a calculating individual that knows what she’s doing and knows how to play this game,” Pristera said in court in 2018. “NCIS just kind of lets her do her own thing.”

...

NCIS officials declined to comment on Raiwest’s history with the agency. The agency has also denied Military Times public records requests for documents showing how much Raiwest was paid and the nature of the cases she was involved in, as well as how many other pimps and prostitutes may have similar paid-informant relationships with the NCIS office in Bahrain.
Speaking of prostitutes: