Nigerian politician jailed for 9 years in UK over organ trafficking plot

A senior Nigerian politician has been sentenced to 9 years and eight months in a UK jail for masterminding a scheme to extract a kidney for his ailing daughter from a younger man he had trafficked to London.

The politician was deemed to be the “motivating issue” behind the plot.

Ike Ekweremadu, 60, a former deputy president of the Nigerian senate, his spouse, Beatrice, 56, and Dr Obinna Obeta, 51, have been discovered responsible by an Previous Bailey jury in March within the first organ trafficking conviction underneath the Fashionable Slavery Act.

They have been discovered to have conspired to deliver a 21-year-old Lagos avenue dealer to a non-public renal unit at London’s Royal Free Hospital as a possible kidney donor for Ekweremadu’s daughter Sonia.

Judgment assertion

On Friday, throughout his sentencing assertion, Mr. Justice Jeremy Johnson acknowledged that the three co-conspirators have been all concerned in a reprehensible enterprise. He declared, “The act of extracting human organs is a sort of servitude. It reduces human beings and their bodily types to commodities that may be traded.”

Addressing Ekweremadu the choose mentioned: “You performed a number one position within the offending. You probably did so as a way to safe the fabric benefit, specifically a human kidney in your daughter. I’m positive that you simply have been the driving pressure all through.” The guardian uk quoted in a report.

The senator was additionally concerned in bribing a medical secretary on the Royal Free, the choose mentioned: “You have been concerned within the corruption of a member of hospital employees.” The choose mentioned Ekweremadu should serve two-thirds of his sentence in jail and the rest launched underneath licence.

There are stories that Nigeria’s senate and the Financial Group of West African States had urged the choose to point out clemency to Ekweremadu, a political ally of the previous president Goodluck Jonathan.

Different events

Beatrice Ekweremadu was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months, with half spent in custody. Obeta, who helped organise the organ harvesting plot after himself receiving a kidney transplant on the Royal Free in July 2021 from one other man allegedly trafficked from Nigeria, was sentenced to 10 years, two-thirds of which should be served in jail.

Background

In March 2022, a hospital rejected the kidney transplant tried by the Ekweremadus. 

Later, it was found that the household had been making an attempt to visitors people for organ transplants, and in Could, the sufferer (known as C) went to the police in worry of his life, believing that he was being lined up for an additional transplant in Nigeria.

C remained terrified of reprisals towards himself and his household and was nervous that his father had been approached to drop the case. The prosecutor Hugh Davies KC acknowledged, “Kidney donation for reward is a considerable, internationally prohibited business trade that exploits economically susceptible people.”

Ike Ekweremadu performed a major position within the 2014 laws that prohibited the exercise he engaged in.

The sufferer was being supported by Justice and Care, a charity that campaigns for the victims of recent slavery.