Travellers 'who kept, beat and starved slaves were organised crime ring running the family business'



Police 'confident' that those arrested are members of just one family

Vulnerable victims lured from soup kitchens, benefit offices and hostels



Slaves kept in filthy kennels and horse-boxes - one held for 15 years



Youngest victim, boy of 17, is reunited with his family



A slavery ring which held 24 captives in appalling conditions at a travellers' camp was an organised crime group run by just one family, police believe.

Yesterday about 200 officers in a dawn raid stormed the site where two dozen men were being kept in dog kennels, horseboxes and filthy caravans.



Today, as the extraordinary details began to emerge about how vulnerable people were lured into the camp in Little Billington, near Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire , the youngest victim, a boy of only 17, was reunited with his family.

The vulnerable victims - some who were starving - had been lured from soup kitchens, benefit offices and hostels with promises of paid jobs and shelter.

Swoop: A man is taken away by a police officer in a dawn raid at the site

Instead they became slaves after their ‘masters’ beat them into submission, stole their possessions and shaved their heads.

They were put to work in gruelling manual labouring jobs including paving driveways and clearing rubble because they were deemed cheaper than hiring machinery, working from 7am until 7pm.

At least one man had been kept as a slave for 15 years. Another was found with dog excrement on his clothes.

Investigators are now working to uncover the true scale of the horror amid speculation that there may have been hundreds of victims.

Detective Chief Inspector Sean O'Neil, from the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit, said: ' I am confident that while the investigation is in its early stages this is a family run "business" and is an organised crime group that has been broken up.'

Five travellers – four men and a woman – from the site were arrested for offences under anti-slavery legislation introduced last year. The woman arrested is pregnant and has been released on police bail and will be questioned further following the birth of her child.

The others will be questioned by police today at police stations in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. Three more suspects were being hunted last night.

Crime scene: The traveller site which was raided by police

However police are facing searching questions over why they did not act sooner after it emerged that claims of slavery at the site were first made three years ago.

Twenty-eight men - Romanians, Poles, Russians and Britons - have come forward with such allegations since 2008.

DCI O’Neil, who led the raid, said: ‘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.

Search: Officers continued the investigation at a property near the site last week

Four men have been charged after the raid at Green Acres caravan site. A woman, who is heavily pregnant, has been bailed

‘They were in sheds or old caravans. 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 others for years.

‘One person, we know, has been here for 15 years, so to him this is normal life.’



‘They were told by the people who had brought them here, “You have no family now, we are your family”. If they wanted to leave they were threatened.’

INSTANT COMMENT

by STEVE DOUGHTY

'How is it that you find slavery in Leighton Buzzard? Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that Green Acre was home to Irish traveller families that persuaded the police to do nothing for three years after the first complaints of slavery on the site. Maybe the local authority, Central Bedfordshire Council, which licences the site, considered the status of travellers as an oppressed ethnic minority when they failed to exercise their powers to check on conditions in the caravans and sheds.' Read more here

Of the 24 'slaves' who were taken from the Greenacre Caravan Site by police, nine have left the medical reception centre and are refusing to help police.

The remaining 15 continue to be assessed for medical and welfare needs. It is expected to take a number of days to establish exactly what has happened to them on the site.



The victims still assisting the investigation include eight British men, three Poles, a Latvian man, a Lithuanian man and two others whose nationalities are unconfirmed. The oldest is 57.



DCI O'Neil said: 'Those people are appreciative of the support that is on offer, but it will take some time to work through with them what has happened.'

The raid followed months of undercover surveillance and investigation after police were tipped off by several slaves who escaped.

It is believed to be the first time that police have used the new laws to target an illegal work camp of this kind.

More than 200 officers, including marksmen and dog handlers, raced on to the site supported by a police helicopter and human trafficking experts at around 5.30am.

The operation with officers from the UK Human Trafficking Centre , took place on a Sunday because it was the only day of the week the slaves were not taken off the site to work. They were forced to clean the site instead.

The victims were mostly British men with psychological and addiction problems. One victim was a suicidal man who had been ‘rescued’ from the edge of a bridge with promises of a better future.

Police said the men were offered £80 a day to work as well as lodging.

Police outside the Leighton Buzzard site after the raid. The men are believed to have been held against their will - some for as long as 15 years - in poor conditions and forced to work for no pay

But on arrival at the site they had their mobile phones taken away and, in a shocking echo of wartime concentration camps, their heads shaved.

At 5am each day they were taken in vans to labouring jobs across Britain. Some were taken as far as Scandinavia for work.

They had become used to existing on such meagre rations that police said it could be dangerous to suddenly give them a lot to eat and they will have to be gradually re-introduced to a proper diet.



Of the 24 men being held at the site, 17 were British, two were from Romania, three from Poland and two from Russia.



Living quarters: Victims were allegedly kept in sheds, kennels and horseboxes

Victims were yesterday taken to a medical reception centre where they were assessed by doctors. Two shabby caravans used to house some of the men were removed by police to be scoured for forensic evidence. Other ‘accommodation blocks’ were cordoned off.

Several thousand pounds in cash, believed to include profits from work undertaken by the slaves, was also found, along with weapons and drugs.



A police spokesman said: ‘They had been found in soup kitchens and benefit offices and told they would be given work clothing a home and fed.

‘We heard in one case a man had been sitting on the parapet of a bridge ready to commit suicide when he was spotted by this gang and brought here to the site after being promised paid work and a roof over his head. It was all lies.

‘They were there so machinery didn’t have to be hired and they weren’t paid a penny.’



Tougher rules make punishment easier

Tighter laws to punish those who exploit human labour came into force last year.



Buying and selling slaves was already an offence dating back to the Acts that ended Britain’s role in the global slave trade in the early 19th century.



And trafficking people for exploitation, including prostitution, was covered by a raft of more modern legislation.



But Parliament was concerned that clearer powers were needed to crack down on those who force others into such servitude.



The move followed a worrying series of cases in which people were discovered to have been forced to work for free, often as domestic servants.



A specific offence was created under Section 71 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, making it illegal to hold another person in servitude.



This made it easier to prosecute slave masters for the full extent of their wrongdoing, rather than relying on crimes of assault, false imprisonment or theft.



Those convicted face up to 14 years imprisonment and an unlimited fine.

Yesterday’s raid and arrests are not the first time police have arrested gipsies or travellers on suspicion of slavery offences.



In June, two men and a woman were held during a raid at an illegal encampment in Hamble, Hampshire.

