Three drug dealers have been jailed under modern slavery laws for using vulnerable children to transport and sell drugs as part of a “county lines” operation.

Michael Karemera, Dean Alford and Glodi Wabelua, all aged 25, were jailed at Inner London crown court. They used six victims aged 14 to 19 as drug mules and ordered them to go from London to Portsmouth to restock drugs.

On Tuesday, Karemera was sentenced to five years in prison, Alford four and Wabelua to three and a half years.

Wabelua, of Tottenham, north London, was convicted of one count of trafficking under the Modern Slavery Act on 17 April. Alford, of Canterbury, pleaded guilty to three counts of trafficking midway through trial while a fourth charge was left to lie on file. Karemera, of Lewisham, south London, also pleaded guilty to a similar charge midway through the trial.

The group ran lucrative mobile phone lines selling crack cocaine and heroin in the Portsmouth area between November 2013 and September 2014. They used the victims to carry the goods to the coastal city and carry cash back to London.



The men were convicted of drugs supply offences in February 2016 at Woolwich crown court. However, it took a further three years to bring the trafficking charges to court.

The victims, three girls and three boys, would sometimes be forced to stash drug packages in body cavities, and would have upwards of £2,000 in cash to deliver to their gangmasters in London.

Three convicted of trafficking in landmark 'county lines' case Read more

Modern slavery legislation is being used to combat the rise of the county lines crisis, in which gangs transport drugs from cities to sell them in provincial towns. They use children as young as 11 to deal mostly heroin and crack cocaine, setting up phone lines in these locations from which they send mass messages about available substances.

The three men kept the victims in squalid conditions at the homes of local drug users in Portsmouth. This practice is known as cuckooing. The properties often contained needles and drug paraphernalia. The victims would receive instructions from the defendants via mobile phone on where to sell or drop off the drugs.

The court heard how the drug dealers controlled the victims’ movements, according to the police. Alford, Karemera and Wabelua frequently met them at night to resupply the drug lines and facilitate deals on the streets of Portsmouth. The victims also had to ask permission to use any of the proceeds to buy food and were not allowed to return to London until all the drugs had been sold.

Each phone line they used to sell drugs on had its own “brand name” to ensure users knew who the message was from. Alford ran the “Duffy” line, Karemera ran the “Mitch” line and Wabelua ran the “Fly” line. The victims were made to drop off their earnings from drug sales, which could be as much as £2,000 a day.

Five of the victims were noticed when they were arrested by Hampshire police for drug offences in Portsmouth in 2014. The sixth victim, aged 19 at the time and classed as a vulnerable adult because of a learning difficulty, was flagged to authorities by an outreach worker.



At trial, he told the court when a user stole £100 cash and £100 worth of drugs from him, associates of Karemera staged a mock execution to terrify him into promising to return the money. He was stripped naked and had a gun placed in his mouth, the court heard.



The five remaining victims refused to provide statements to police. Instead, detectives pieced together the case against the three men using DNA evidence and mobile phone data.



Judge Usha Karu said: “One of the main reasons [the victims] were chosen was because of their youth, many were arrested for possession with intent to supply and thus they too became embroiled in the justice system.



“The level of psychological harm they may have suffered is hard to gauge. For children who are vulnerable it is quick and easy money – the fact that they consented is plainly no defence.”



She added: “Text messages [on the victims’] mobile phones showed the level of control exercised by you.”



The defendants were first arrested between September and October 2014, and were initially charged with conspiracy to supply class A drugs and human trafficking. The sentences received on Tuesday will run concurrently with their previous sentences for drug offences.



Last year, Zakaria Mohammed, 21, became the first person to be jailed under new modern slavery laws for exploiting children as part of a county lines operation between Birmingham and Lincolnshire.

Mohammed admitted using three children aged between 14 and 15 years old to deal crack cocaine and heroin while they lived in substandard accommodation.