Agency Reports
Former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu and his wife Beatrice, have been jailed for plotting to traffic a young man to the UK to harvest his organ for their sick daughter in a legal first.
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Following a landmark modern slavery case, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, 60, his wife Beatrice, 56, and Physician, Dr Obinna Obeta, 51, were found guilty at the Old Bailey in March.
Their victim, a 21 year old poor street trader in Lagos, was brought to the UK to provide a kidney for the Ekweremadus’ 25-year-old daughter Sonia.
He fled in fear of his life and walked into a police station exactly a year ago to report what had happened after the Royal Free Hospital called a halt on the private £80,000 procedure.
In a televised sentencing on Friday, Mr Justice Johnson recognised Ike Ekweremadu’s “substantial fall from grace” as he jailed him for nine years and eight months.
The senior judge said: “People-trafficking across international borders for the harvesting of human organs is a form of slavery.
“It treats human beings and their body parts as commodities to be bought and sold.
“It is a trade that preys on poverty, misery and desperation.”
He told the defendants: “You each played a part in that despicable trade.”
On the question of harm to the victim if the intended transplant went ahead, he said: “He would have faced spending the rest of his life with only one kidney and without the requisite funding for the required aftercare.”
He added the risks had not been properly explained and there had been no consent “in any meaningful sense”.