Kirsty Thomson

JustRight Scotland told investigative platform The Ferret that it has seen a rise in referrals from young Vietnamese people charged and sometimes remanded in Scottish jails after police raids on cannabis factories.

The law firm and the Scottish Refugee Council (SRC) allege that authorities are disregarding clear “trafficking indicators” and charging victims of trafficking with drugs offences.

Kirsty Thomson, partner at JustRight Scotland, said: “Our lawyers started receiving referrals of this nature around autumn last year and they have continued to come in as recently as a few weeks ago.

“Several of these young people had been held in detention on remand, or are still on remand, and we have also received a case of one young person who has been convicted. The majority of these young people were children at the time of arrest.

“In all of these cases, we think that there were very clear indicators that the young people were potentially victims of human trafficking and exploitation at the time of arrest, yet they were still arrested.

“In a lot of the cases, formal referrals were made to the relevant authority that determines whether someone is a victim of trafficking. Sometimes, this referral was even made by the police at the same time as the arrest, meaning that the authorities actually knew they were potential child victims at the time they were arresting and detaining them.”