FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A federal judge has moved a suburban Fort Worth couple from a detention facility to house arrest as they await trial on forced-labor charges.
Federal court documents show U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cureton signed the order during a hearing Monday.
The defendants, Mohamed Toure and his wife Denise Cros-Toure, are the son and daughter-in-law of a former president of the West African country of Guinea.
An arrest affidavit says they arranged for a girl to travel from her rural Guinean village in 2000 and forced her to work in their Southlake home for years without pay.
The couple’s attorneys deny the charge.
Cureton also ordered them to surrender their passports while the case proceeds.
The maximum penalty for a forced-labor conviction is 20 years in a U.S. prison.
