A Magistrate Court in the United Kingdom has found embattled former deputy senate president Ike Ike Ekweremadu, his wife Beatrice, and daughter Sonia guilty of organ trafficking.
According to TheCable, the doctor who was involved in the entire scheme was also found guilty by the court.
The convicted allegedly planned to bring the victim to the UK, exploit his ignorance, and harvest his kidney.
According to Channels TV, the verdict is the first of its kind under the statutory provisions of the United Kingdom’s Modern Slavery Act.
Senator Ekweremadu, his wife, and their sick daughter have been on trial in the UK for alleged organ harvesting for months.
The trio was apprehended in 2022 for smuggling a boy to the UK whose kidney was to be harvested to replace the critically ill Sonia’s.
According to reports, the young boy whose kidney was to be harvested was misidentified as Sonia’s cousin at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
According to the Punch Newspaper, Sonia’s illness caused her to drop out of her master’s degree in film at Newcastle University.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor, Hugh Davies KC, told the court that Ekweremadus and Obeta had treated the man and other potential donors as “disposable assets – spare parts for reward”.
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.”
Before the verdict of the UK court, Beatrice, the wife of embattled former Deputy Senate President made fresh confession in court.
In the court session, Beatrice told the court that she is unaware of the search for a kidney donor for her ailing daughter.
The lawmaker revealed to the court that he found out their daughter had a kidney problem when she fell sick in 2019.