How a millionaire Nigerian politician trafficked a Lagos street hawker to London to harvest his kidney for his ailing daughter: DAVID JONES's chilling investigation begs the question... just how widespread is this macabre trade?
He was trafficked into the country believing he had been brought to find work
The £80,000 operation was to have been performed privately by a top surgeon
One day last May, a dishevelled young man from Nigeria walked into the police station at Staines, in Middlesex, saying he was homeless and destitute, and pleading for help.
It was the beginning of an astonishing and chilling story.
A story that led to a landmark trial at the Old Bailey, which reached its denouement yesterday, and exposed the sordid underbelly of Britain's burgeoning 'health tourism' industry, revealing it to be ripe for exploitation.
Some of the information the boy gave was false. He said his father had died when he was young, when both his parents are, in fact, alive — and that he was aged 15. Checks conducted after he was taken in by Surrey social services showed him to be 21.
However, the essence of his story proved to be all too true. Some two months earlier, he had been trafficked to Britain by one of Nigeria's most prominent and powerful families, believing he had been brought here to find work.
To his horror, however, he belatedly discovered that they intended to harvest one of his kidneys for their daughter, who had attended two elite English private schools and graduated from university here, but had fallen seriously ill and needed a transplant.
READ MORE: Wealthy Nigerian senator faces jail for organ harvesting plot
The £80,000 operation was to have been performed privately by a leading surgeon at the world-renowned Royal Free Hospital, in Hampstead, North London.
Under a deal brokered by a grasping middleman, the wealthy family (said to own 40 properties in London, Dubai, the U.S. and Nigeria) were to pay the unwitting 'donor' somewhere between £2,400 and £7,000; a pittance for them, but a king's ransom for him — a self-described 'hustler' who earned a few pounds a day by hawking mobile phone accessories from a wheelbarrow in Lagos.
Yesterday, the three architects of this vile plot, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, 60, his wife Beatrice, 56, and Dr Obinna Obeta, 50 — the fixer who 'did their dirty work' — were found guilty of conspiracy to facilitate the travel of the young man (who cannot be named) with a view to his exploitation, an offence which carries a maximum ten-year prison sentence.
They were the first people to be tried in Britain for trafficking someone with the intention of harvesting an organ under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
Sonia Ekweremadu, whose essential dialysis sessions delayed the trial, had faced the same charge, but the jury accepted she was unaware of the conspiracy, and she was acquitted.
As the verdicts were announced, she and her mother, whose bail was revoked pending sentence, clung to one another for comfort and sobbed.
Ironically, during his time in government Senator Ekweremadu helped to instigate laws banning commercial organ harvesting in Nigeria. His elegant wife runs a family foundation that pays for poor Nigerians' hospital treatment and education.
Yet in the damning words of prosecutor Hugh Davies KC, they and their fixer treated the intended donor and his body parts as a 'disposable asset . . . a commodity' in an 'arms-length, emotionally cold transaction'.
The significance of this case goes far beyond one privileged African family's callousness and sense of entitlement, however.
It has serious implications for Britain, where there is such a shortage of kidneys that 5,341 people are awaiting a deceased donor. They can expect to wait between two and three years.
It revealed how our hospitals, 36 of which are licenced for transplant surgery, are wide open to deception by overseas 'health tourists'.
It also exposed alarming flaws in the vetting procedure overseen by the Human Tissue Authority (HTA), the regulatory body entrusted with ensuring transplants involving living donors are ethical and safe. (Yesterday the HTA insisted its checks were 'thorough and robust'.)
And it showed the apparent ease with which overseas donors — who are permitted to travel to Britain to give organs if they are doing so altruistically — can obtain UK visas on medical grounds, and then remain in Britain illegally.
In this case, it seems the donor wasn't even interviewed personally at the British High Commission in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
His application was accepted without question after an online form was submitted on his behalf, falsely describing him as Sonia's cousin.
A source closely involved in the prosecution believes it to be 'the tip of an iceberg' and says other bogus foreign transplant donors have probably slipped through the net.
Source :
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... idney.html
The UK is a festering cesspit of human trafficking scumbags like these nowadays…
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The UK is a festering cesspit of human trafficking scumbags like these nowadays…
There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see. ~ Leonardo da Vinci
Well it is if your only source of information for EVERY SINGLE FUCKING POST is the Daily Mail.
No wonder you’re so angry fella.
No wonder you’re so angry fella.
History of slave-trading, now experiencing human traffickers from countries the exploited.
The irony.
How unfair!
The irony.
How unfair!
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- I live above an internet cafe
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Nobody cares son,nobody cares!Guest wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 3:28 pmWell it is if your only source of information for EVERY SINGLE FUCKING POST is the Daily Mail.
No wonder you’re so angry fella.
There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see. ~ Leonardo da Vinci
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