A wealthy Nigerian senator and his wife have been found guilty of an organ harvesting plot.
A jury found that Senator Ike Ekweremadu, 60, his wife Beatrice, 56 and medical “middleman” Dr Obinna Obeta, 50, were guilty of a conspiracy to bring a young man to Britain to give his kidney to the politician’s sick daughter.
The Ekweremadus’ daughter Sonia, 25, wept as she was cleared of the same charge on Thursday.
Wife Beatrice Ekweremadu was also found guilty of the conspiracy
The court heard that the 21-year-old street trader from Lagos was brought 4,382 miles to London to donate a kidney in an £80,000 private procedure at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
When he was rejected as unsuitable, the Ekweremadus transferred their interest to Turkey and set about finding another donor.
The Ekweremadus, who have an address in Willesden Green, north-west London, and Dr Obeta, from Southwark, south London, denied the charges against them.
The Ekweremadus set about finding a donor, enlisting the help of Dr Obeta, a former medical school classmate of Ike’s brother Isaac “Diwe” Ekweremadu, who remains in Nigeria.
In opening addresses at the Old Bailey in February, lawyers for the defendants insisted they believed the donor, who cannot be identified, was acting “altruistically”.
Martin Hicks KC, for Ike Ekweremadu, told jurors: “Be alive please to the possible cultural differences between this country and that of Nigeria, particularly to altruistic donation.”
He said: “We say the issue in this case is simple – did there exist an agreement to exploit (the donor) in the way the prosecution allege and if so who was a party to it?”
Sonia Ekweremadu, 25 was cleared of involvment in the plot
The politician’s case is that Dr Obeta had spoken to Ekweremadu’s medically trained brother Diwe in the autumn of 2021 and had offered to help find Sonia a prospective donor.
Mr Hicks said Ekweremadu’s only communication was through his brother Diwe and he relied on the “medical knowledge and standing” of the doctors involved.
He denied lying in support of the donor’s visa application to travel to the UK and was not privy to an online application which claimed the young man was related to Sonia. Mr Hicks said Ekweremadu did not attend any visits to the Royal Free Hospital in February and March last year, which concluded that the donor was unsuitable.
The court heard that the 21-year-old donor was recruited at a Lagos street market. At the time, he was making just a few pounds a day selling telephone parts from a cart.
Mr Davies said that the young man’s account was that he believed he was being taken to London to work and the tests were for a visa.
The prosecutor said Dr Obeta was controlling the process in Nigeria and regularly updating Diwe Ekweremadu, who was, in turn, updating his family.
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Source: independent.co.uk