Teen girl trafficked 200 miles from home and forced to sell drugs after going on date with man she met on social media
The victim was tortured, sexually abused and forced to sell crack cocaine and heroin to local junkies
TWO London gangsters who trafficked children and vulnerable young women to South Wales in a “county line” drug supply network were today jailed for a total of 19 years in the first case of its kind in British legal history.
An innocent 19-year-old woman was lured into going on a date with North London enforcer Mahad Yusuf, 21, before being driven 200 miles to Swansea where he smashed her phone and told her “she belonged to him.”
The victim was physically and mentally tortured, sexually abused and forced to sell crack cocaine and heroin to local junkies who placed their orders by phone to Yusuf’s 20-year-old street gang boss Fesal Mahamud.
She was reported missing to police by her frantic mother and freed nine days later during a joint investigation by the Met’s Operation Trident gang-busting unit and South Wales Police.
A boy aged 14 and girl of 15, both from the London area, were also rescued from the address, where they too were forced to sell drugs.
Mahamud, of Enfield, was jailed for 10 years at Swansea crown court today and henchman Yusuf, of Edmonton, received nine years after they pleaded guilty in December to trafficking a young person and conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.
Both men were also made the subject of a 20-year Slavery Trafficking Prevention Order.
It was the first such prosecution ever brought under the Modern Slavery Act of 2015 and comes as urban gangs in London, Merseyside and the West Midlands increasingly transport youngsters to country and coastal towns to sell drugs.
The drugs are ordered by phone from the city-based drug lord - hence being described by police as “county line” rackets - and then sold to locals by vulnerable youngsters under their command.
Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Duncan Ball said more than 900 such crime networks were operating in the UK with victims as young as 12 being forced to sell drugs in far-flung towns.
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The majority of youngsters forced into slave labour in drug dens and on the streets are girls, with many lured after innocently meeting traffickers on social network sites like Snapchat, said police.
DAC Ball said: “There has been an evolution in the way gangs are doing this.
“We are looking at these county line networks going a lot further, running hundreds of miles out of cities across the country.
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