A former security guard was today found guilty of brainwashing African children with black magic then trafficking them to Europe to be sold as prostitutes.
Osezua Osolase, 42, was convicted of five counts of shipping teenage girls from Nigeria to Britain where he groomed them to be sold for sex in Italy.
A jury at Canterbury Crown Court convicted him after hearing he cast spells over his three Nigerian victims – now aged 15, 17 and 18 – to stop them running away.
Sara Ellis, prosecuting, told the court Osolase found his victims begging on the streets of Nigeria and promised to take them to the UK to help them get an education.
He then used West African rituals to trick the teenagers into believing they would die if they tried to runaway.
During one juju magic ritual Ososlase took a terrified youngster to a place of “witchcraft” in April last year and forced her to bathe using a red cloth and blood.
The girl then had her armpit hair cut, toe and finger nails cut and blood was taken from her right hand before she was told the spell would kill her if she tried to run away.
Shockingly, the girls discovered they were being sold when they heard the sex slave trader bartering for Euros70,000 for them over the phone – then settling for Euros65,000.
The teenagers were given fake passports to fly into Britain then Italy.
But one of the victims, then aged 17, refused to go through customs and begged Italian officials for help, the court heard.
The prosecutor said the teenager was returned to Stansted Airport, Essex, where she eventually admitted to being Nigerian.
Following the verdicts, DI Eddie Fox, from the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, said: “We are happy he has been convicted of trafficking. He is an evil man who has traded in human misery.
“Osolase took girls – who had suffered lives of poverty in Nigeria – and used them as human cargo for his own greed and not shown an ounce of care for his victims.”
The jury took two days to return their verdict following a six week trial.
Osezua Osolase was convicted of a total of five counts of trafficking for sexual purposes, one count of rape, and one count of sexual activity with a child.
The 42-year-old was acquitted of three further three charges of rapes, one of trafficking and one assault causing actual bodily harm charge, having denied all the offences.
