Devil in designer clothes

In his designer clothes and his wrap-around shades, Pedro Miguel da Costa Damba was a glamorous figure on the run-down estates of Lisbon and the Algarve in Portugal, and in the dusty African shanty towns of Angola. Smooth-talking and confident, he knew exactly how to use his brief glimpse of glory as a professional footballer to convince impressionable young boys among the poor communities to come with him and fulfil a dream of a better life.

"Football can turn you into a star and make you rich," he would tell them. "You can earn thousands if you come away with me." But in fact it was Damba and his gang of accomplices who were making thousands - by smuggling the boys into slavery and prostitution in Britain.

Damba, now 34, had emigrated to Portugal as a teenager and enjoyed a brief spell of glory playing for the junior team at second division Lisbon Estrela de Amadora. Born to a Portuguese mother and an Angolan father in Damba - north of the Angolan capital of Luanda - he
arrived in Lisbon aged 15 and lived with his uncle. The club's youth team coach, Manuel Calado, 69, recalled: "Even then he was arrogant and thought he knew it all."

However, three years later Damba failed to get a contract to play for the senior team and moved out of his uncle's home in Amadora - relying on the club's £30-a-week sponsorship money to help pay for the bedsit he now shared with a friend. He worked variously in restaurants and bars but struggled to make ends meet.

Desperate for cash, Damba turned to the sordid trade of child trafficking, choosing the two areas he knew well to harvest boys.

Youngsters in Angola were eager to escape the aftermath of its bloody civil war. Damba would persuade them to come to Portugal to fulfil their dreams of playing professional football, telling them a golden future awaited.

And, to the Angolan boys of the barrios in Portugal, he would sell the dream of learning to play football in England at a soccer camp.

It was a lucrative business. Damba led a gang - believed by police to have six other members including at least two women - who found the children and accompanied them to London.

There he earned his money by handing the boys over to the murky people who would find them work. Police know that the middle-men of child smuggling find homes looking for virtual slaves, as well as pimps looking for under-age male prostitutes. Damba earned thousands of pounds from the middle-men, spending it on expensive clothes and Nike trainers, completing his street-wise image by wearing reflective wrap-around sunglasses all year round.

For £50 a day he could afford a room at the Ibis Hotel in Faro, in the Algarve, where he brought his victims. They saw him as their saviour, calling him "uncle" and "godfather". The children's parents never questioned his motives, believing he was a kindly man who helped the unfortunate escape the life of poverty that he had known. One friend, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said: "Damba gained the trust of children and their families in Angola. He would see boys playing football barefoot in the streets and would tell them they could become famous players if they came back with him to Portugal.

"These children were poor and naive and, because they were desperate to get away from poverty, they believed every word because he looked good. He told them the world of football had been kind to him and would help them too ... but his only motive was money."

A 45-year-old woman who lives on one of the run-down estates he operated from, and who asked not to be named, said: "Many of the minors would go with him as their parents were desperate to get them away from the world of drugs. In fact, they were relieved when he took them. Their mothers never contacted them once they left and had no idea what type of life they led. They thought their children were being looked after."

Portuguese officials say Damba made frequent trips to Britain, bringing mostly Angolan children through Heathrow and Gatwick. Often he was accompanied by women whom the children called "aunt" - completing the perfect fake family. Between 1997 and 2000 he made at least 88 flight reservations for London, with immigration officials saying at least 50 children were transported out of Portugal within eight months.

But a police source in Lisbon said: "I would say it is naive to talk about 50. Hundreds is probably better. Child trafficking is very lucrative and Damba did things efficiently. He knew how to get through frontiers and used days when airports were busiest."

In December 2000, Damba - on a British Airways flight from Faro to London - caught the attention of police. Accompanied by three children, an official recognised him as having caught the same flight a week earlier. The official double-checked the documents of two of the children and telephoned the home of one of them. He discovered that a 12-yearold girl, who from the documents was supposedly on the plane with Damba, was sitting at home with her mother. Her ID card had gone missing two years earlier.

In March last year Damba was jailed in Portugal for six-and-a-half years for forging travel documents and aiding the illegal immigration of an estimated 50 boys into Britain. The sentence is said to have angered prosecutors for its leniency. Police fear the rest of his gang is still operating, moving children through Spain and into Germany.

Damba's unprecedented conviction may mean he can help detectives unravel the mystery of "Adam", the unknown child whose torso was found in the Thames, and whom it is believed was a smuggling victim. While Damba languishes in a high-security jail, police across Europe hope they can use him to help end the sordid trade which has claimed many more victims than just Adam.

Damba's own family has virtually disowned him. His four brothers refuse to visit him. His sister Adelina, 22, an illegal immigrant working in a Lisbon cafȬ says she has been to see him twice but their mother "doesn't want to know".

Damba has four wives and five children, but when arrested he was living with one of numerous girlfriends in Streatham.

"I am the only one who believes him," said Adelina. "He says he has nothing to do with the Thames killing. He says he took children to Britain to families where they would have a better life because he felt sorry for them. He is depressed and having a bad time in prison. He is a good person.

"He is very private and never tells me anything. I didn't even know he was married with children."