A former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, and his wife, Beatrice, have been convicted guilty of organ trafficking in the United Kingdom.
The couple and a medical practitioner, Dr Obinna Obeta, were convicted guilty of enabling the flight of a young man to Britain with a view to his exploitation following a six-week trial at the Old Bailey.
They criminally colluded to bring the 21-year-old Lagos street trader to London to exploit him for his kidney, the jury ruled on Thursday.
The judge, Justice Jeremy Johnson, will issue a punishment at a later date, The Guardian UK writes.
Ekweremadu, Beatrice, their daughter, Sonia, and Obeta have been on trial at the Old Bailey for organ trafficking.
Their conviction on Thursday was the first judgement of its sort under the Modern Slavery Act.
Ekweremadu and his wife were last years detained in the United Kingdom for allegedly trafficking a young man into the nation to harvest his kidney.
The young guy was believed to have been fraudulently presented as Sonia’s relative in an unsuccessful endeavour to convince physicians to carry out an £80,000 private surgery at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
The young guy was claimed to have been offered an unlawful incentive to become a donor for Sonia after renal problems caused her to drop out of a master’s degree in cinema at Newcastle University.
The prosecution, Hugh Davies KC, told the court the Ekweremadus and Obeta had viewed the man and other prospective donors as “disposable assets – spare components for reward”.
He stated they entered an “emotionally cold economic transaction” with the individual, The Guardian UK article said.
The attitude of Ekweremadu shows “entitlement, dishonesty and hypocrisy”, Davies told the jury.
He claimed Ekweremadu “agreed to compensate someone for a kidney for his daughter – someone in situations of poverty and from whom he separated himself and made no investigations, and with whom, for his political safety, he desired no direct contact”.
Davies continued, “What he decided to do was not just pragmatic in the therapeutic interests of his daughter, Sonia, it was exploitation, it was illegal. There is no justification to argue he behaved out of love for his daughter. Her therapeutic requirements must come at the price of the exploitation of someone in poverty.”
It was earlier stated that Beatrice denied participation in the quest for an organ donor for their ill daughter, Sonia.
It was further said that Ekweremadu claimed he engaged the young guy after he was cautioned by his doctor against finding a kidney donor from within his family members.
