Ike Ekweremadu, Nigeria’s former deputy Senate president faces up to life in jail in Britain on Friday when he is sentenced for plotting to harvest a man’s kidney for his sick daughter.
In the first United Kingdom case of its kind, Ekweremadu, 60, was found guilty in March at London’s Old Bailey criminal court of conspiring to traffic the young street trader into Britain for his body part.Also convicted were Ekweremadu’s wife Beatrice, 56, and Obinna Obeta, 50, a doctor who acted as a middleman in the plot. They too will be sentenced Friday.
The Ekweremadus’ daughter Sonia, 25, shed tears as she was cleared of the same charge after jurors deliberated for nearly 14 hours.
In Britain, it is legal to donate a kidney, but not for financial or material reward.
It was the first time organ harvesting conspiracy charges had been brought under the UK’s 2015 Modern Slavery Act.
