Child trafficking ring leader caught in city

On October 1 2018 police mounted a drugs raid in Davidson Drive,in Northfield, Aberdeen.

A 25-year-old man bolted for the back entrance of the house as officers burst through the front door.

He escaped through the kitchen and into the neighbours’ gardens but was later hunted down and arrested.

Officers found 102 packages of heroin and cocaine and two wraps of crack cocaine hidden in a bag after searching the property. The haul was worth nearly £16,000.

Investigators also discovered weighing scales with traces of drugs and £3,385 in cash – the majority of the money locked away in a safe.

The arrested man was Glodi Wabelua.

Unknown to officers, they had just caught the ring leader of a county lines child trafficking gang who would soon become the star of a landmark human trafficking case in London.

Wabelua along with fellow gang leaders Dean Alford and Michael Karemera, all 25, ran a lucrative drugs supply line into Portsmouth from London using teenagers as young as 14 as their mules.

The gang’s operation was simple, horrendous and effective.

The three ringleaders were in charge of phone lines that drug users in Portsmouth would call to buy class A narcotics.

The gang exploited at least five young teenagers and a vulnerable 19-yearold to carry out their county lines network.

The victims, all from south London, were recruited and groomed before being sent to Portsmouth where they were harboured in drugs users’ homes and waited to carry out the gang’s instructions.

This practice of taking over drug users’ or other vulnerable adults’ homes is known as cuckooing – named after the bird which uses other birds’ nests for its young.

Wabelua, Alford and Karemera had total control over their teenage victims’ freedom of movement.

In 2018 during an appeal over his drugs convictions, Wabelua was released from prison.

He struck up an online friendship with Aberdeen mum Stevie Simpson, 27, travelled north and moved into her Davidson Drive home.

Following his arrest, Wabelua was found guilty of one count of human trafficking at Inner London Crown Court and jailed for three-and-a-half-years. Alford and Karemera pleaded guilty to two and three counts of trafficking respectively.

In July 2019 Glodi Wabelua was jailed for five years and 219 days at Edinburgh High Court over Aberdeen drug charges.

Dean Alford, Michael Karemera and Glodi Wabelua ran a drugs operation.

Police went in the front as a suspect fled out the back.