Botched hitman plot, a ‘gay love triangle' & school bullies… how calamitous drug lords' £100m cocaine empire fell apart
AT the height of their success, drug baron James Harding and his 'loyal right-hand man' Jayes Kharouti ran a vast £100million criminal empire - raking in a staggering £70,000 a DAY.
Now, Harding and his cohorts have been jailed for plotting the murder of a gangland rival from his luxury base in Dubai after cops blew open one of the biggest EncroChat investigations in history.
16
16
When cyber cops snared Harding, 34, who claimed to be a high-end watch sales executive, he was living in luxury at the The Nest apartment complex in Al Barari, Dubai, staying in five-star hotels and driving Bugatti and Lamborghini sports cars.
The flashy narco's illicit business empire made a staggering £5million in just ten weeks, but it emerged he was prepared to do anything to keep his strangehold on the cocaine trade.
Along with his henchman Kharouti, 39, he hatched an evil plot to murder a rival, going so far as to try to hire a hitman for £100,000.
But the pair were scuppered by Scotland Yard detectives who cracked open the EncroChat messaging system - and tracked down the kingpin using vain shirtless selfies he had snapped on the same phone he used to arrange the hit.
On the platform favoured by underworld criminals, Harding used the nickname 'thetopsking', while Kharouti went by the handle 'besttops' and 'topsybricks'.
The pair, who were jailed at the Old Bailey this week, make an unlikely narco double act - with Harding insisting he was no murderer, but rather a suppressed homosexual involved in a bizarre love triangle, who had been bullied at school over his facial deformities.
He denied using the handle 'thetopskiing', claiming instead it was actually used by his secret male lover.
Meanwhile, The Sun can reveal Kharouti is an Afghan national who travelled to Britain as an asylum seeker in the Nineties with his mother - and has previously been busted over a nightclub drugs trafficking ring.
In 2008 Kharouti, from Wallington in Surrey, was sentenced to four years in jail after pleading guilty to supplying more than half a kilo of cocaine to nightclubs across London.
Using five different aliases, and five different dates of birth, he made £200,000 in just 18 months, with thousands of pounds found stashed inside a milkshake carton at his home.
Moment drug-smuggling pals DIVE into water during boat chase as they attempt to flee Border Force with cocaine in hull
Cops raided his home and unearthed more than £4,000 in cash – £1,000 stashed in his bedroom and £3,000 tucked a box in a kitchen cupboard.
Officers also searched his car and found a staggering 620g of cocaine with a street value estimated at around £34,000.
But after being released from jail he formed a murky friendship with Harding, who had been born with hemifacial microsomia, a condition causing the left side of his face to be under-developed.
He endured multiple surgeries as a child and teenager to correct a deformed left ear, cheek and jaw.
"I was alienated by everyone at school because of it," he confessed at his Old Bailey trial, which ended this week.
Jurors heard Harding had feelings for "boys and girls" as a teenager, but "suppressed" his homosexual desires.
16
16
16
16
As a teenager, Harding, who grew up in Hampshire, began to sell legal highs to make money.
He advertised the drugs using online classified adverts.
But the scam backfired and in August 2012 he was arrested and charged with drugs offences and possession of false ID documents.
In his bombshell Old Bailey this month, Harding returned to his childhood struggles for an extraordinary and elaborate defence.
16
16
16
16
The court had previously heard from cops that Harding used the handle 'thetopskiing' while hatching plans on EncroChat.
In a remarkable twist, Harding insisted he did not use the handle - but was sleeping with the man who did.
Harding's lawyer Clare Montgomery KC explained: "He (Harding) has for a long time been too ashamed to admit, and has always wanted to keep private, until this case has forced him to reveal his secret life.
"That secret is that he had an intense and sexual relationship with 'thetopsking'."
Before he was sent to prison the first time, Harding had fathered a child in 2010.
His relationship with the little girl's mother broke down while he was in jail - when she apparently told Harding that he was not the child's biological father.
But when Harding was released from prison in 2016 his ex-girlfriend contacted him to apologise for the way she had treated him.
"I'd always felt rejected," he moaned. "And I wanted to know why she would leave me like that.
"She explained to me she wouldn't have just left me for anyone. Her daughter's dad had got back into contact with her and wanted to rebuild a relationship with his daughter."
Despite this, Harding said he went on to rekindle his relationship with the mother and she and her daughter moved into his home in Alton, Hampshire.
But three years later, he claimed his girlfriend and her daughter left the UK and moved to Dubai where the real father, 'thetopskiing' , was living.
16
16
Harding later joined them - and recalled how HE fell for the mystery man too.
He said he always found 'thetopskiing' or TK, good-looking and charming, but things changed after a boozy night out at the end of 2019.
"We went to brunch at a place called Mama Zonia in Dubai, and after that a group of us went back to TK's villa, and after some time people were leaving," he said.
"TK and I were drinking, and drinking quite a lot, and we ended up becoming intimate.
"I wasn't proud of myself at all. I felt disgusted with myself."
Harding claimed he was taken advantage of and used by 'thetopskiing' to book flights and restaurants.
16
Despite his denials, cops since proved that in fact Harding was 'thetopskiing' following a major cyber investigation.
Harding gave away his true identity through a series of boastful selfies which showed his face, distinctive clothing and tattoos.
They were able to prove that he and Kharouti had teamed up to import vast quantities of drugs.
Their messages from 2020 revealed that "thetopsking" told other users when "lands" of cocaine were going to happen, and provided them with co-ordinates to collect the drugs close to Dover, where they had entered the UK by lorry.
As a result Harding was arrested at Geneva Airport in Switzerland in December 2021, and extradited back to the UK.
His second in command Kharouti was extradited from Turkey to the UK last June.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE In a plot twist worthy of John le Carré, we reveal the grandfather of the brilliant new head of MI6 was a Nazi spy chief
When Blaise Metreweli was announced as the next head of MI6 it was immediately apparent she had long been groomed for the top. The woman set to become the first female spy chief in the agency's 116-year history had all the right attributes. Fiercely intelligent, Ms Metreweli had grown up abroad in a multilingual home and excelled at Cambridge – where she read anthropology at Pembroke College and was in the winning crew in the 1997 women's Boat Race – before she graduated, and then... disappeared. From the age of 22, her name was only mentioned in public when receiving honours 'for services to British foreign policy' and in a civil service notice documenting a bland economics posting to Dubai. Despite entering her 20s in the Wild West early days of social media, there is no trace of her online. There are no loose-lipped acquaintances, either. Indeed, when the news broke of her appointment earlier this month, the most interesting thing contemporaries could say of her is that she still enjoyed rowing. It seemed, then, that MI6 had done its job. Its legendary vetting services had succeeded in keeping a lid on everything about Ms Metreweli's no doubt remarkable double life. But there is one thing neither she nor the world's most famous intelligence agency could control, the one thing that none of us get to choose – her family. Archives in Germany reveal that the woman who from September will take charge of the nation's secrets is the granddaughter of a notorious Nazi collaborator who spied and killed for Adolf Hitler's Germany. We can disclose that Ms Metreweli's grandfather was Constantine Dobrowolski, a Ukrainian dubbed 'The Butcher' who defected from the Red Army to become the Fatherland's chief informant in the region of Chernihiv in Ukraine. While Ms Metreweli never met her paternal grandfather – who remained in Nazi-occupied Ukraine while the rest of his family fled the Soviet 'liberation' of the region in 1943 – his story does cast an awkward shadow over her impeccable career in MI5, MI6 and the Foreign Office. The Mail has unearthed hundreds of pages of documents held in archives in Freiburg, Germany, detailing the extraordinary – and blood-soaked – life and times of Dobrowolski which are themselves worthy of a spy thriller. Known as 'Agent No 30' by Wehrmacht commanders, he had vowed revenge against the Russians ever since they slaughtered his noble land-owning family, plundered their estate and seized Ukraine after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The archives detail how the Soviets put a 50,000-rouble bounty – £200,000 in today's money – on the head of the local spy chief they labelled 'the worst enemy of the Ukrainian people'. Within the files are handwritten letters from Ms Metreweli's grandfather to Nazi superiors signed off 'Heil Hitler'. Shockingly, Dobrowolski boasted to German commanders of 'personally' taking part 'in the extermination of the Jews' and killing hundreds of Ukrainian resistance fighters. There are even accounts of him looting the bodies of Holocaust victims and laughing at the sexual assault of female prisoners. Of course, Ms Metreweli cannot be judged for the sins of her grandfather. One of our nation's most formidable intelligence operatives, she has served her country with distinction on dangerous operations for MI6 across Europe and the Middle East for two decades in the wake of 9/11. She then moved to a senior role at MI5 – the UK's domestic counterintelligence and security agency – again winning praise from insiders for her handling of hostile states' counterintelligence. It was long predicted by those in the know that she would, one day, take the top job at for Ms Metreweli – now coming out of the shadows as MI6's incoming chief, a role that allows her name to be known for the first time – there can be no doubt her grandfather's wartime crimes pose a challenge. They will be seized upon by the Kremlin, which has sought to portray Ukrainians as 'Nazis' and similarly smear Kyiv's Western backers since its illegal full-scale invasion in 2022. Indeed, Vladimir Putin's supporters have already discovered that her paternal heritage is Ukrainian, not Georgian as her surname suggests, and tried to use that fact to imply she is descended from a Nazi. Beka Kobakhidze, a professor of modern history at Ilia State University in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, who helped the Mail uncover the Metreweli family tree, said it was only a matter of time until the Kremlin found and exploited the truth – if they don't already know it. 'As a historian and researcher from a country that grapples daily with Russian propaganda, I can say with confidence that this will become a favourite talking point for Kremlin propagandists for years to come,' he said. 'Of course, children should not be held responsible for the sins of their fathers – or grandparents, for that matter. But I do find it puzzling why the UK would willingly hand such 'ammunition' to the Russians.' The Russians will, no doubt, twist every word to their own sinister agenda. Yet if there is anyone equipped to handle such cheap shots from a hostile foreign power, it is the trailblazing Ms Metreweli. What is indisputable is that the story of how a Nazi spy chief's own granddaughter rose to lead MI6 is nothing short of astounding. When Ms Metreweli was appointed as the next head of the Secret Intelligence Service two weeks ago it was greeted with fanfare in the UK. Some 30 years after Dame Judi Dench became the first woman to take up the fictional 'M' character in the James Bond movies, life had finally imitated art and the real MI6 had its first female spy chief, aka 'C'. But it was also met with jubilation some 3,000 miles away in the tiny Black Sea nation of Georgia – for this is where the Metreweli name hails from (though traditionally spelt with a v). 'Our name originates from the mountainous region of Racha, from a village called Utsera,' local historian Roin Metreveli said. 'The thing about Georgian villages, much like in Scotland, is that everyone is related, everyone is either a cousin or thrice removed.' Mr Metreveli then added, jokingly: 'So, I can confidently claim that my cousin will be James Bond's boss!' Back in the UK, the new spy chief's surname had also piqued our interest at the Daily Mail. Georgia is a colourful part of the world and, if Ms Metreweli's forbears were as capable as her, then their life under the Soviet Union, and their subsequent journey to the UK, was surely an interesting tale. Yet almost immediately, the Georgian connection unravelled. Ms Metreweli's father, Constantine Metreweli, is a British military veteran and renowned radiologist who raised his daughter and her siblings in Hong Kong. Because he was born abroad, there was little trace of him in Britain. That is, aside from an intriguing entry in the London Gazette, an official UK government journal of record, from 1966 which reads: 'Dobrowolski, Constantine (known as Constantine Metreweli); Of uncertain nationality.' It did not take long for Putin's agents, who have a far more pernicious interest in the Metreweli back story, to find this. For them, this was proof enough that the incoming MI6 spy chief was a Ukrainian, despite the Dobrowolski surname also being common in Poland. Not just that, but for one Russian propagandist this was somehow evidence that it was likely her grandfather was a Nazi. 'Post-war Ukrainian emigration to Britain largely consisted of members of the SS Galicia division who surrendered to the British in Italy,' he wrote to his supporters on numerous social media channels days after Ms Metreweli's appointment. These unfounded claims were soon being widely repeated in the Russian Press. It set in motion a race between historians in Russia, Georgia and Ukraine to get to the truth. Why did Ms Metreweli's father go by what appeared to be an alias? Was it a mark of respect to a selfless family who saved the Dobrowolskis from Nazi prison camps, as one suggested? Could there be a more innocent explanation? Or, in fact, was this a cover for a darker family secret as those in Moscow claimed? As academics across the former Soviet states posted competing theories online and dug through respective records, the Mail requested the public file to which the London Gazette notice referred in the National Archives – a Home Office naturalisation certificate for Mr Metreweli. It showed he was born on January 1, 1943, in Snovsk, Ukraine, to parents 'Constantin Dobrowolski and Barbara Metreweli, formerly Barbara Dobrowolska (of uncertain nationality)'. Further searches found that Metreweli was not an alias but instead the surname of Constantine Jr's stepfather, David Metreweli, who married his mother, Barbara Dobrowolska, in Yorkshire in 1947. We had to determine why the name had passed on to his stepson, and in turn to his step-granddaughter who is now set to become MI6 spy chief. And, crucially, who was Constantine Dobrowolski Sr? We contacted a Ukrainian expert in the field who had been sharing his musings on the subject and gave him our findings on Ms Metreweli's grandparents. The reply was succinct. 'F***. The Russians are right.' Therein ended the collaboration. Because Constantine Dobrowolski was born abroad, there was little trace of him in Britain. That is, aside from this intriguing entry in the London Gazette But it did not take long for us – and others – to circle in on the Dobrowolskis' life in Snovsk, and what we found astonished us. Dr Giorgi Astamadze, of the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, was another Georgian historian who started the search hoping to unearth Ms Metreweli's roots. And as he uncovered her past he soon realised the political implications if this information was not handled with care and sensitivity, and so agreed to come on board with our investigation. 'As we dug deeper, the initial excitement gave way to a growing sense of horror,' he said. 'More and more disturbing details began to emerge from Constantine Dobrowolski's ominous past. 'There's an entire archive in Germany – three volumes, over 500 pages – and together, they tell a truly harrowing story.' After a little digging, we came across an identity that matched in the Federal Military Archives located in Freiburg, Germany. Indeed, we found several tomes on a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator who was known to his enemies as 'The Butcher'. As we scoured them, the Russians were closing in. They too had discovered her step-grandfather was David Metreweli and posted unfounded claims falsely stating he was a Nazi. Separately, pro-Russia historians trying to paint Ukrainians as collaborators had for years been writing long blog posts on Constantine Dobrowolski Sr, whose crimes are well documented in Soviet histories. They had not yet made the link to the new MI6 chief, but it was only a matter of time. We had to be certain of the genealogy and pored over hundreds of pages of primary- source correspondence between Constantine Sr and his Nazi superiors. Just as in the naturalisation certificate for Constantine Jr, they showed Constantine Sr had a wife called Varvara, the Russian spelling of Barbara, and at some point in early 1943 they had a child together in Snovsk – a town then home to around just 6,000 people. While Constantine Sr stayed to fight the Soviets, who were 'liberating' Ukraine from the East, such was his standing he got safe passage from the Nazis for his wife and new child – then just two months old – to flee West towards Germany that February. Somehow, from there, it appears Varvara and her child ended up in Britain where she anglicised her name to Barbara and married a new partner, Georgian-born David Metreweli, in Yorkshire after the war. On her wedding certificate, she marked her status as 'widowed'. So her son, Constantine Jr, grew up a Metreweli – perhaps because he never knew his real father, whom he parted with when barely a few months old, or possibly because Barbara was wanting to suppress their dark family history. In time, the Metreweli name passed down the family line to his own children, including to his daughter, who from September will head up the very same intelligence service that was fighting against her grandfather in the Second World War. So, who exactly was Constantine Dobrowolski Sr, and what were his crimes? Extensive letters to his Nazi commanders between 1941 and 1943 give a detailed biography of the man in his own words – which make for uncomfortable reading. Born in the Chernihiv region of Ukraine to a German-Polish father and a Ukrainian mother in 1906, his family had a small estate of 1,300 acres. When he was just 11, the Bolsheviks invaded, destroyed his house, and 'exterminated' nearly all of his relatives. He survived on the run for years, obtaining a fake ID and travelling to Moscow – but was caught in 1926 and sentenced to ten years in Siberia for anti-Soviet agitation, anti-Semitism and concealing his ancestry. Returning from exile in 1937, he studied economic engineering in Vladivostok before being assigned to Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, to purchase machinery tools in April 1941 when the Germans invaded. Dobrowolski immediately reported to the War Commissariat and requested to be sent to the front, where he defected to the Nazis at the first opportunity on August 4, 1941. Explaining himself to his new German commanders, he wrote: 'If drafted into the Red Army, my political unreliability would have meant I would only have been used in the rear. I had long hoped that Germany would enter the war with Russia.' He immediately reported to his local military branch and requested that he be sent to the front. 'I wanted to use the panic to get over to the German side in this way, and all the more quickly,' Dobrowolski wrote. Paid just 81 Reichsmark per month by the Nazis – around £250 today, an amount that put him on the lowest rung of the German workforce – Dobrowolski was clearly not motivated by money. Initially, he served with an SS tank unit, and later told Nazi officers: 'There, I oversaw captured Russian vehicles and personally took part in front-line action near Kyiv and in the extermination of Jews.' Some historians claim he may even have taken part in the Babyn Yar massacre, in which more than 30,000 Jews were slaughtered over two days in Kyiv, but our research suggests that is false. In letters, he says he left Kyiv for his home district of Sosyntsia on September 22, 1941 – seven days before the massacre. But the history here is just as grim, with the local Jewish community destroyed and more than 300 Jews shot under Nazi occupation. Constantine Sr told his commanders that he had organised a Ukrainian police unit of 300 men who 'cleared' 12 sub-districts there between October and December 1941. During this time, Ukrainian police assisted German murder squads and Hungarian soldiers shooting the Jewish population. One harrowing account claimed that Dobrowolski was part of a police force that is said to have raped, shot, and robbed the bodies of Jewish women in Ponornytsia, Chernihiv – though he is not believed to have taken part in the massacre and sexual assault. Over a year later a witness, interrogated by the Germans, claimed Constantine Sr's subordinate gave him 'a gold watch' from one of the victims. 'I had access to [Constantine Sr's] residence in Sosnytsia and saw many valuable possessions there, such as carpets, tablecloths, silk shawls, and a luxurious fur coat, which originated from the Jewish executions in Ponornytsia,' the witness said. The same witness claimed that he 'overheard' a conversation in which Constantine Sr simply 'laughed' on being told 'that female prisoners in the jail were being sexually abused through violence'. He allegedly said that he 'tolerated these acts without objection'. By his own account, Constantine Sr said he 'cleansed' various districts 'of undesirable elements'. He was commended by a Hungarian colonel for his 'excellent reconnaissance' in this task in December 1941. After this, the Soviets put the 50,000-rouble bounty on his head. A Red Army lieutenant colonel told his men: 'The fascist man-eater who has returned with the Germans, Dobrowolski, whom you all know, is taking revenge for his lost property and houses by killing and shooting the best of our people helping the Red Army... 'In order to eliminate him as quickly as possible, as the worst enemy of the Ukrainian people, I am offering a reward of 50,000 roubles to anyone who delivers this fascist Dobrowolski to us, dead or alive, and he will be proposed for an award from the government.' Constantine Sr rose to become a local intelligence chief, first serving as an inspector for the Hiwi – Eastern European Nazi collaborators – before joining the Nazis' notorious secret military police, the Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP), in July 1942. The GFP operated under the Commissar Order which instructed them to summarily execute captured local political leaders, partisans and Jewish people in 'cleansing operations'. Soviet propaganda claimed Constantine Sr would assure Ukrainians that he was fighting with partisans against the Nazis. Then, once he had identified the local resistance, he had them executed. A German assessment said of him: 'Captain Dobrowolski is a convinced opponent of Bolshevism and, accordingly, the most hated man among the Bolsheviks. His political convictions bind him firmly to the side of the German Wehrmacht, to which he has become an absolutely reliable and valuable assistant.' It concludes: 'In summary, it can be said that Captain Dobrowolski is a reliable comrade and talented gang fighter.' Though it is not detailed how Constantine Sr met Varvara, she is mentioned increasingly in correspondence between him and commanding Nazis from 1942 before a request is made to get her and his son out of Snovsk in 1943 as the Soviets are moving in. He is granted a pass for a 'confidential mission' to bring his 'wife and child' from Snovsk to Uman, south-west Ukraine, from which they are to be 'provided with the necessary railway travel documents'. The Soviets succeeded in taking Chernihiv by September 1943, and the last record of Constantine Sr in the archives is from the previous month. There, the trail runs cold. Barbara claimed she was a widow when marrying in 1947, and it is to be presumed that her previous partner was killed as Nazi Germany fell. A Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office spokesman said last night: 'Blaise Metreweli neither knew nor met her paternal grandfather. Blaise's ancestry is characterised by conflict and division and, as is the case for many with eastern European heritage, only partially understood. 'It is precisely this complex heritage which has contributed to her commitment to prevent conflict and protect the British public from modern threats from today's hostile states, as the next chief of MI6.' The Mail agrees – we could not be in safer hands. And yet the intrigue does not quite end there. For Constantine Sr is listed in a Soviet book documenting the enemies of the USSR – published in 1969. 'He is tall, thin, has black hair, brown eyes, a straight nose, a large forehead, a dimple on his chin, and a tattoo of a horseshoe and a horse's head on his arm below the elbow,' it reads. It adds that the 'wanted case' is a man who 'limps after a leg fracture' and that there is 'a photograph from 1943 and a handwriting sample available'. Though, surely, it is highly unlikely that he survived, this does raise the tantalising possibility that, unknown to authorities – and to his own family – Constantine Dobrowolski Sr, the man his enemies dubbed 'The Butcher', somehow managed to disappear into the shadows and live out the rest of his days.
BBC News
3 hours ago
- BBC News
Five jailed for running major drug-dealing network from Bristol
Five people who admitted being involved in running a major drug-supply network have each been jailed for up to 12 four men and a woman were sentenced at Bristol Crown Court after police discovered cocaine, MDMA, ketamine and cannabis, valued at about £30, also seized 14kg of cocaine with a street value of more than £1.1m in Bristol and also found £84,595 at a property in Barton Supt Ben Lavender at Avon and Somerset Police said the investigation had "reduced harm significantly". The defendants who were jailed were:Claude Craig Gumbs, 34, of Church Street, Redfield, was jailed for 12 Griffiths, 34, of Patchway, South Gloucestershire, was jailed for eight yearsOsheen Griffiths, 31, of Lambeth, London, was jailed for three years and three Chanter, 64, of Brook Road, Montpelier, was jailed for three years and four monthsTerry Ellick, 39, of Kingswood Heights, was also jailed for three years and four monthsAll five pleaded guilty to two counts of being concerned in the supply of cocaine and MDMA, and two counts of being concerned in the supply ketamine and also pleaded guilty to charges of supplying cocaine to a man in Redfield in August 2024, possession with intent to supply cocaine and possession of criminal property. Together the group were involved in running a drugs line that handed a variety of banned substances to hundreds of customers, the court heard. The force began an investigation in August 2024 after a man's rucksack was found to contain 3kg of cocaine, and tracked the source to Gumbs' home address in Barton then searched a flat, where they found Osheen Griffiths and, after finding drugs and cash, they were both arrested on suspicion of drug offences. Some of those drugs were for sale via the drugs Junior Griffiths and Osheen Griffiths were involved in running the drugs line, receiving orders and directing dealers Chanter and Ellick to Supt Ben Lavender, head of the serious organised crime team, said: "The supply of drugs like cocaine causes upset and misery in our communities and has associated consequences in terms of further offences being committed to fund addictions."
Sky News
6 hours ago
- Sky News
Child Q: Two Met Police officers sacked over strip search of 15-year-old schoolgirl
Two Metropolitan Police officers have been sacked after a misconduct hearing found they committed gross misconduct during the strip search of a 15-year-old schoolgirl wrongly suspected of possessing cannabis. PCs Kristina Linge, Victoria Wray, and Rafal Szmydynski conducted the search of the black girl, known as Child Q, with no appropriate adult present at a school in Hackney, east London, in 2020. Scotland Yard apologised, and the Children's Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, described the case as "shocking" after details of the incident emerged in 2022. 1:01 PCs Linge, Wray and Szmydynski suspected the girl was in possession of cannabis, but the police watchdog later determined no drugs were found in her bags or outer clothing. At a police misconduct hearing in London today, Linge and Szmydytnski were found to have committed gross misconduct. They have both been dismissed. Wray was cleared of gross misconduct, but found to have committed misconduct, and was given a final written warning. The panel found she became involved in a "situation where the decision had been decided already". The case of Child Q drew outrage when it first came to light in March 2022 and sparked protests. The officers had been accused of treating Child Q differently due to her race, but Commander Jason Prins, chair of the misconduct panel, said: "We do not draw any inference that race was an effective cause of this incident." The panel found concerns about drugs and potential gang involvement were initially raised by school staff. "Like many cases where stop and search is used, here the subject of the search was identified to police officers by other professionals rather than being by officers in the street," Commander Prins added. He said the problem was with the decision to conduct the strip search in the first place, finding it was "unnecessary" and "disproportionate". "There should never have been a strip search in these circumstances," he said, accepting Child Q found it "humiliating and degrading". The panel did not find any officer breached professional behaviour standards relating to equality and diversity, or honesty and integrity. During the misconduct case, the three officers gave evidence, and each said they were not influenced by subconscious bias. Luke Ponte, for Linge, said they happened to be "three immigrant officers" who were "trying to do their best to their adopted country" as they were seeking to solve a problem. Mr Ponte said: "These officers must not bear the entire weight of Child Q where there has been wider dysfunction as to how this came about." A fourth officer will face a disciplinary meeting at a later date relating to no appropriate adult being present during the search. This is separate from this misconduct hearing, and it's a lower level of discipline. Commander Kevin Southworth, on behalf of the force, said in a statement after the verdict: "The experience of Child Q should never have happened and was truly regrettable. "We have sincerely apologised to Child Q since this incident happened. Again, I am deeply sorry to Child Q and her family for the trauma that we caused her, and the damage this incident caused to the trust and confidence Black communities across London have in our officers. "While the officers involved did not act correctly, we acknowledge there were organisational failings. Training to our officers around strip search and the type of search carried out on Child Q was inadequate, and our oversight of the power was also severely lacking. "This left officers, often young in service or junior in rank, making difficult decisions in complex situations with little information, support or clear resources to help their decision-making. "What happened to Child Q was a catalyst for change, both for the Met and for policing nationally. "While we should not have needed an incident such as Child Q to check our approach, it has absolutely led us to improving our processes and significantly reducing the number of these types of searches carried out. "It's crucial we get this right to ensure the impact on young people is minimised as far as possible. "Sadly, we know there are children in London being exploited to carry drugs and weapons for others as well as involved in criminality, so these types of searches have to remain within police powers. The work we have done since Child Q means we now have the right safeguards in place."
