Nigerian politician found guilty by UK court in plot to harvest 21-year-old man's organs

Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy (centre) speaking to the media outside the Old Bailey, in central London, after wealthy Nigerian politician Senator Ike Ekweremadu, his wife Beatrice, and medical "middleman" Dr Obinna Obeta were found guilty of c LONDON - A senior Nigerian politician and his wife were found guilty Thursday of conspiring to transport a street trader to the U.K.

as part of an organ-harvesting plot.Ike Ekweremadu, who was deputy president of the Nigerian Senate and a lawyer, and his wife, Beatrice, were accused of arranging the travel of a 21-year-old man to the U.K.

with a view to exploiting him for a kidney donation.Prosecutors said the politician and his wife were behind the recruitment of the man at a Lagos street market, and that they arranged for the victim to provide a kidney to their 25-year-old daughter, Sonia, in an 80,000-pound (nearly $100,000) transplant operation at a London hospital.The victim, who was transported to London in February 2022, believed he was being taken to the capital for work, and that under the agreement he would be paid thousands of pounds, prosecutors said.Kidney donations are lawful in the U.K., but it's a criminal offense to reward someone with money or other material advantage for doing so.The verdict is the first to convict suspects of an organ-harvesting conspiracy under the U.K.’s modern slavery laws.As part of the ruse, the victim was described as Sonia's cousin in his U.K.

visa application, and the Ekweremadus pretended to doctors that the young man was related to Sonia.But a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital became suspicious about the circumstances surrounding the proposed operation, and decided it couldn't go ahead.