[attach id=215108 size="large"]Osezua Osolase. Photo: PA[/attach]

A sex trafficker who used African witchcraft rituals to silence young girls smuggled into Britain to be sold on as prostitutes has been jailed for 20 years.

Osezua Osolase, 42, preyed on poverty-stricken Nigerian orphans and tricked them into travelling to the UK with the promise of a better life.

But instead, the Nigerian treated the victims as “commodities” to be used in a form of “modern-day slavery” by attempting to send them on to mainland Europe to be sexually assaulted by gangs.

West African juju rituals were used to instil terror into Osolase’s three victims, one aged just 14, who felt helpless because they feared retribution and had no-one to turn to.

At Canterbury Crown Court on Friday, he was found guilty of trafficking for sexual exploitation, and one each of rape and sexual activity with a child. Sentencing him yesterday, Judge Adele Williams told Osolase, a recycling worker from Beaumont Drive, Gravesend, Kent, that he was “devoid of conscience, devoid of compassion to your victims”.

Osolase, who has HIV, showed no emotion as sentence was passed

Osolase, who has HIV, showed no emotion as sentence was passed.

Judge Williams told him he put his victims “in fear” by using juju rituals to force their obedience and secure their silence. She said he was responsible for a “cruel deception” by promising the girls, one of whom lived under a bridge in Nigeria, a better standard of life in the UK.

The judge said Osolase treated the girls as “objects” to be sold as “sex slaves”. And she said the fact that he raped one girl knowing he has HIV was a “seriously aggravating” feature.

One 16-year-old girl described how a juju ceremony performed on her in Nigeria involved having samples of blood extracted. Hair from her head and intimate parts were also cut and she was made to swear an oath of silence and smuggled into Britain.

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