Drug dealers jailed over modern slavery case

LONDON: Three dealers who recruited vulnerable teenagers to act as couriers to run drugs to coastal communities have been jailed for a total of 12-and-a-half years for offences of modern slavery in a landmark case.Glodi Wabelua, Dean Alford and Michael Karemera, all 25, are believed to be the first to be charged under the Modern Slavery Act in respect of recruiting six youths aged 14 to 19 to traffic crack cocaine and heroin to Portsmouth for their “county lines” network.Wabelua, of Tottenham, was convicted of one count of trafficking under the Modern Slavery Act at Inner London Crown Court on April 17. Alford, of Canterbury, pleaded guilty to three counts of trafficking midway through trial while a fourth charge was left to lie on the file. Karemera, of Lewisham, also pleaded guilty to one like charge midway through the trial.The trio ran lucrative drug lines — hotlines to buy narcotics — to addicts in the Portsmouth area between November 2013 September 2014 and used the victims to carry the goods to the coastal city and carry cash back to London.The victims — three girls and three boys — would sometimes be forced to stash drug packages in their body cavities, and would have upwards of £2,000 in cash to deliver to their gang masters in London.Couriers were housed in squalid conditions in the homes of local users during their stay — often with needles and drug paraphernalia left lying around — and would receive instructions from the defendants via mobile phone on where to sell or drop off the drugs.They had to ask permission to use any of the proceeds from the drugs to buy food, and were not allowed to return to London until all the drugs had been sold.The Met’s anti-gang Trident unit launched Operation Pibera involving 250 officers when the offences first came to light in the spring of 2014, when five of the six victims were arrested in Portsmouth by Hampshire police.

from The News International - World http://bit.ly/2Hm9Bye