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A court in the United Kingdom has sentenced former Deputy Senate President of Nigeria, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, to nine years and eight months in prison for an organ trafficking plot.
The court also sentenced his wife, Beatrice, to four years six months while the medical doctor who acted as a ‘middleman’ in the plot, Dr Obinna Obeta, was handed a 10 years jail term and his medical license was also suspended.
Their conviction was the first verdict of its kind under the Modern Slavery Act.
The prosecutor, Hugh Davies KC, had told the court that Ekweremadus and Obeta had treated the man
He said they entered an “emotionally cold commercial transaction” with the man, The Guardian UK report added.
The behaviour of Ekweremadu showed “entitlement, dishonesty and hypocrisy”, Davies told the jury.
He said Ekweremadu “agreed to reward someone for a kidney for his daughter – somebody in circumstances of poverty and from whom he distanced himself and made no inquiries, and with whom, for his own political protection, he wanted no direct contact”.
Davies added, “What he agreed to do was not simply expedient in the clinical interests of his daughter, Sonia, it was exploitation, it was criminal. It is no defence to say he acted out of love for his daughter. Her clinical needs cannot come at the expense of the exploitation of somebody in poverty.”
Details later…
