Specialist team set up to tackle trafficking

A new police squad has been set up to smash child trafficking gangs who are smuggling Vietnamese youngsters into Scotland.

The specialist unit aims to dismantle the organised crime network preying on migrants, including vulnerable children, to use as slave labour.

In July we told you how three Vietnamese men claimed they had been forced into running a cannabis farm worth around £300,000.

Sheriff Thomas Millar accepted the trio may have been trafficked to the UK, but said prison was inevitable given the scale of the operation.

The three men – Nam Hoang Nguyen, 22, San Van Vo, 42, and Nam Ngo, 33 – were each jailed for three years.

The new squad, which primarily operates out of Edinburgh, is interviewing children who have come forward to establish how they came to be in the country.

It is widely accepted that children have been trafficked from the south-east Asian country and were sent to work in cannabis farms, nail bars and car washes.

Police are also investigating concerns that some were destined for the sex industry.

The creation of the specialist team comes just weeks after the bodies of 39 Vietnamese nationals were found in a refrigerated lorry in Essex.

During her evidence against Nguyen, Vo and Ngo, fiscal depute Paula Russell told Hamilton Sheriff Court how police found makeshift living quarters amongst the cannabis cultivation.

Sheriff Millar confirmed that he imposed a lesser sentence because it appeared the accused had been forced into the criminal set-up.