A Nigerian politician has been found guilty of organ trafficking in Britain in the first case of its kind.
Senator Ike Ekweremadu, 60, wife Beatrice, 56, and ‘middleman’ Dr Obinna Obeta, 50, were all found guilty of conspiring to exploit a young man from Lagos for an organ.
It is the first time defendants have been convicted under the Modern Slavery Act of an organ harvesting conspiracy.
Their daughter Sonia burst out in tears as the jury, which deliberated for nearly 14 hours, cleared her of the same charge.
Ekweremadu and Co. criminally conspired to bring the 21-year-old Lagos street trader to London to exploit him for his kidney, the jury found, according to UK Guardian.
The prosecutor Hugh Davies KC told the court the 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 behaviour of Ekweremadu, a successful lawyer and founder of an anti-poverty charity who helped draw up Nigeria’s laws against organ trafficking, showed “entitlement, dishonesty and hypocrisy”, Davies told the jury.