R v Najib Arab

Facts

The applicant, Najib Arab, was convicted after trial at the Crown Court at Cardiff of requiring a person to perform forced or compulsory labour contrary to section 1(1)(b) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The complainant was a vulnerable, looked-after girl of 15 living in a children's home some 30 miles from Cardiff, who was given the applicant's telephone number as a source of cannabis. He asked her for a photograph, arranged to meet her and told her he was 17; he was in fact 29, fourteen years her senior. She was flattered by his attention, apparent wealth and supply of drugs, food and affection, but was in truth being groomed. Over seven weeks she was inveigled into preparing and bagging cannabis and ketamine and used as a drugs courier, left alone in a dirty, vermin-infested flat behind a self-locking door to which she had no key, isolated and increasingly frightened of a man who carried a knife and had shown her videos of himself assaulting people. She was rescued after being reported missing. On the first day of trial the applicant pleaded guilty to two offences of being concerned in the supply of Class B drugs. Her Honour Judge Crowther sentenced him on 1 July 2025 to an extended determinate sentence of 9 years under section 279 of the Sentencing Act 2020, comprising a 7-year custodial term and a 2-year extended licence, with 10 months concurrent on the drugs counts. He renewed his application for leave to appeal against sentence.