‘County lines’ dealer jailed for child trafficking
A DRUG dealer who trafficked children to run drugs in a “county lines” crack and heroin gang has been jailed following a landmark prosecution.
Zakaria Mohammed, 21, groomed three teenagers, including a girl of 14, before making them sell drugs from squalid flats. The youngsters were taken from their homes in Birmingham to Lincoln, where they worked as “expendable workhorses” in drug dens.
After they were reported missing, police found them in a filthy and freezing one-bedroom flat with two drug addicts, surrounded by used syringes.
Mohammed was jailed for 14 years – the first drug dealer convicted in Britain for breaching the Modern Slavery Act by trafficking children.
“County lines” gangs recruit children from cities and send them to provincial towns to sell drugs. Mohammed’s network earned him £500 a day, Birmingham Crown Court was told.
When police raided his base in Lincoln on Jan 25, they found a large, bloodstained knife in a plastic bag, a bundle of cash and two “zombie” knives.
There was no sign of drugs at the property, but surveillance identified Mohammed’s car making regular trips from Birmingham, often accompanied by teenagers, to an address in Lincoln.
West Midlands Police intercepted him on Feb 6 in Birmingham and seized his car. A phone used to run the “Castro” drugs line had more than 100 customer contacts and was found during a search of the vehicle, along with a pair of black school trousers, a white shirt and school tie belonging to one of the missing children.
Lincolnshire police filmed children passing drugs to customers and raided the Lincoln flat on Feb 12. Three further 15-year-old boys from Birmingham, all reported missing, were found, as well as 25 wraps of heroin and crack cocaine, cash and the two knives.
Mohammed pleaded guilty after police recovered CCTV from Birmingham New Street railway station showing him buying tickets for two children to travel to Lincoln. Det Con Max Gebhard, of West Midlands Police, said after the case: “Mohammed was very much in charge. He was a very busy man, taking drugs and phones to children in the cuckooed addresses in Lincoln while taking away the money that had been made.
“This is a hugely significant conviction. It shows we can go after ‘county lines’ offenders not just for drug supply but also under trafficking legislation.”
Det Insp Tom Hadley said: “Children are often groomed with false promises of money and the allure of an exciting lifestyle. In reality they were having their childhood stolen from them by Mohammed who considered them expendable ‘workhorses’.”