The Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, United Kingdom (UK), has sentenced Ike Ekweremadu, 60, former deputy senate president, to nine years and eight months in prison for organ harvesting.
According to British Broadcasting Corporation, his 56-year-old wife, Beatrice, was handed four years and six months jail term at the sentencing on Friday.
On March 23, the jury pronounced a guilty verdict on the senator, his wife, Beatrice, and Obinna Obeta, a doctor who acted as the middleman.
The jury held that they conspired to bring the 21-year-old at the centre of the matter to London to exploit him for his kidney.
Meanwhile, the verdict is the first of its kind under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 of the UK.
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The judge, Justice Adam Johnson, during a televised sentence hearing, recognised Ike Ekweremadu’s “substantial fall from grace.”
He said: “People-trafficking across international borders for the harvesting of human organs is a form of slavery.”
Their victim, a poor street trader in Lagos, was brought to the UK to provide a kidney for Ekweremadus’ daughter, however, he fled in fear of his life and walked into a police station exactly a year ago to report what had happened after the Royal Free Hospital called a halt on the private £80,000 procedure.
