At least one person from Latvia is among 24 men who were freed Sept. 11 from their slave-like conditions at a British caravan site, about 70 kilometers northwest of London, police say.

Five persons, including a pregnant woman, were arrested as part of the investigation. Two other suspects are being sought. About 100 officers were involved in a series of arrests at the caravan site in Leighton Buzzard, according to press releases from Bedfordshire Police.

The men who were freed have been provided with medical and welfare care by British authorities.

“The men we found at the site were in a poor state of physical health and the conditions they were living in were shockingly filthy and cramped,” said Det. Chief Inspector Sean O’Neil of the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit. “We believe that some of them had been living and working there in a state of virtual slavery, some for just a few weeks and other for up to 15 years.”

The men range in age from 17 to 57. They were mostly British or Eastern European, police said. Most of them are cooperating with the investigation.

Dubbed “Operation Netwing,” the investigation “centered around intelligence suggesting that a number of people were being held against their will in poor conditions at the site and forced to work for no pay,” according to a police press release. Police were assisted in the investigation by the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre.

The arrests were made under the U.K.‘s Slavery and Servitude Act 2010.

“The new legislation has allowed the investigation more scope and takes into account emotional rather than physical harm,” O’Neil said. “I am confident that while the investigation is in its early stages this is a family run ‘business’ and is an organized crime group that has been broken up by the Netwing operation.”

Former Latvian President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga will be one of two recipients of this year’s Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has announced.

Vīķe-Freiberga is scheduled to receive the honor Sept. 8 during a ceremony in the Latvian Embassy in Washington, D.C. The other recipient, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida, will be attending a joint session of Congress and will receive her medal at a later date.

The medal is awarded each year to individuals and institutions that have demonstrated a life-long commitment to freedom and democracy and opposition to communism and all other forms of tyranny, according to a press release from the foundation.

Vīķe-Freiberga served as Latvia’s head of state from 1999-2007 and was the first woman president in post-communist Eastern Europe. Born in Latvia in 1937, she and her family fled to the West during the Second World War. Vīķe-Freiberga is a professor emerita of psychology from the University of Montreal in Canada. With her husband Imants she now runs the Rīga-based VVF Consulting, a firm that specializes in international relations, diplomacy, science, politics and negotiations.

Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in 1989 became the first Hispanic woman to serve in Congress. She fled her native Cuba as a child. According to the foundation’s announcement, “During her two decades of Congressional service, she has been a staunch defender of human rights around the world and a sharp critic of Fidel Castro’s dictatorial regime.”

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation was established by Congress in 1993 to build a memorial in Washington to commemorate the more than 100 million victims of communism. The memorial was dedicated in 2007. Two years later, the foundation launched the online Global Museum on Communism.