This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A drug dealer who used three children from Birmingham to sell crack cocaine and heroin to addicts in a Lincolnshire town has been jailed for 14 years after admitting charges of modern slavery.

In what the prosecutors described as a landmark case, Zakaria Mohammed admitted using two boys aged 15 and a 14-year-old girl to deal on his behalf from a flat in Lincoln that was also occupied by two heroin users.

Mohammed, 21, transported the children, drugs and money between Birmingham and Lincoln. He operated the line remotely; taking calls and then telling the children when and where to make sales.

Police said he made profits of £500 a day. Yet his young dealers benefited little from the ring. In a “filthy, cold” flat identified by the investigation, three “drawn, tired and hungry” youngsters were found living alongside two hard drug users “surrounded by used syringes”.

“They were not wearing new trainers or designer clothes … they didn’t have new phones or gadgets,” said DI Tom Hadley, the senior investigating officer in the case. “They were not making money – they were having their childhood stolen from them by Mohammed who considered them expendable workhorses.

“That’s the reality for children lured into this world through false promises.”

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West Midlands police began a joint investigation with colleagues from Lincolnshire police after a raid on a flat in Lincoln on 25 January turned up two 15-year-old boys who had been reported missing from their homes in Birmingham.

Police surveillance identified a Seat Leon registered to Mohammed making regular trips from Birmingham, often accompanied by teenagers, to a Foster Street property in Lincoln. On 6 February police intercepted him as he left the M6 into Birmingham, and seized his car for being uninsured.

In the car, police found a phone used to run a drug-dealing line with more than 100 customer contacts. They also found a pair of black school trousers, a white shirt and a school tie belonging to a child from Birmingham who had been reported missing.

Forensic examination of a Mountain Dew bottle and a Ribena carton found in the car returned DNA matches to two further 15-year-old boys who had disappeared.

Despite losing his car, Mohammed continued his operation. West Midlands police watched him book regular taxis – at more than £100 a trip – to ferry himself and children from Birmingham to Lincoln. Lincolnshire police filmed the children peddling the drugs to users as often as every 10 minutes.

Detectives raided the Foster Street flat on 12 February, finding 25 wraps of heroin and cocaine, as well as cash and two “zombie” knives. Three 15-year-old boys, all reported as missing from Birmingham, were found inside the one-bed flat along with two drug users.

The raid did not deter Mohammed, who repeatedly changed the number on the line to avoid detection, each time sending mass text messages to customers to advertise the new details. The following day, he bought a new car, which officers were able to track making deliveries to properties taken over by the ring.

Officers also recovered CCTV from Birmingham New Street station showing him buying train tickets for two children to travel to Lincoln.

Both children – a boy aged 15 and a 14-year-old girl who had been reported missing – were found when officers from Lincolnshire and West Midlands raided a property in Hermit Street, Lincoln, on 6 April. Evidence recovered at the address included more drugs, two hunting knives, and £1,400 in cash – believed to be the take from less than three days’ dealing.

Mohammed was arrested later that day, as he headed into Lincoln. He refused to talk to detectives during interview but later admitted four counts of possessing drugs with intent to supply and five counts of human trafficking.

Passing sentence at Birmingham crown court, the judge, Nicholas Webb, said: “The fact is the children were being taken away for days or weeks, exposed to potential danger in a squalid environment.”