Immigrant freed from circus piranha act

A Bulgarian girl has been freed from an Italian circus which forced her to hold her breath in an icy tank full of piranha fish.

Citing eye witness reports, police said the girl, 19, sometimes tried to get out of the tank - only for the circus owner to push her back in with the fish.

The girl's younger sister was also forced to perform a dangerous animal act, police said.

The second girl, 16, had to lie still in a glass 'coffin' while snakes and tarantulas crawled over her.

On one occasion she was bitten.

The circus owner, his son and son-in-law have been arrested on human trafficking and slavery charges.

According to the police, the girls and their parents were forced to live in ''inhuman'' conditions in the backs of two lorries.

Two Bulgarian citizens have been placed under investigation for helping the circus lure Eastern Europeans to their circus on false job promises.

An unspecified number of circus 'slaves' managed to escape before Italian authorities received reports of the Bulgarians' conditions, police said.

Under physical threat and warnings that they would be reported as illegal immigrants, the family worked 15-to-20-hour days cleaning the circus.

They were paid 100 euros a week instead of the 500 they had agreed to, police said.