BEATRICE Ekweremadu, wife of former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has been freed from the United Kingdom (UK) prison and returned to Nigeria.
Vanguard Newspaper reported on Wednesday, January 22, that a source confirmed that she was back home.
Ekweremadu and his wife were accused of trying to harvest the kidney of a young Nigerian boy to give to their sick daughter.
Ekweremadu ended up with a 10-year prison sentence, while his wife got four years and six months. A family doctor Obinna Obeta found guilty of participating in the plan got a 10-year prison term.
They were the first to be convicted under the UK Modern Slavery Act for an organ harvesting conspiracy.
The trial judge held that the defendants had intended harm to the donor that would have resulted in him spending the rest of his life with only one kidney.
He added that the risks were not properly explained to the victim and there had been no consent “in any meaningful sense.”.
During the trial, it was alleged that the 21-year-old street trader was to be rewarded for donating the organ to Sonia Ekweremadu in an £80,000 private procedure at London’s Royal Free Hospital.
The prosecution claimed the donor was offered up to £7,000 along with the promise of a better life in the UK, but the donor did not understand until his first appointment with a consultant at the hospital that he was there for a kidney transplant.
It was also claimed that the man was falsely presented as Sonia Ekweremadu’s cousin in a failed attempt to persuade medics to carry out the procedure.
While it is lawful to donate a kidney in the UK, it becomes criminal if money or another material advantage is rewarded.
A few days after the ruling, the Nigerian Senate joined the House of Representatives, ECOWAS Parliament, and former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo to appeal to the court for leniency in giving out a sentence against the couple.
The Senate pointed out that the lawmaker was ignorant of the law as it applied in the country when he sought a kidney donor for his ailing daughter, adding that all the defendants were first-time offenders.
The Chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), Abike Dabiri-Erewa, also pleaded with the UK government for leniency.
A reporter with the ICIR
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