… Refuses husband bail
A UK court has granted bail to the wife of Senator Ike Ekweremadu, Beatrice, who is being held alongside her husband in the United Kingdom.
The court, however, refused to grant bail to her husband.
Ekweremadu, a former Deputy President of the Senate, was detained alongside his wife over allegations of a plot to traffic a man into the UK to harvest a kidney for their daughter.
The lawmaker and his wife appeared at the Old Bailey on Friday for a bail hearing, Daily Mail reported.
According to the report, 55-year-old Beatrice is charged with arranging or facilitating the travel of another person with a view to exploitation, between August 1 last year and May 5, under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
“The position is that I have granted bail to Beatrice subject to some fairly stringent conditions, but I have refused bail to Ike,” the Common Serjeant of London, Richard Marks, was quoted as saying.
The prosecutors did not appeal the decision of the court.
Before the bail hearing, authorities had accused a doctor of plotting with Senator Ekweremadu and Beatrice to traffic the said victim into the UK to harvest his kidney for their daughter.
The doctor, identified as Obinna Obeta of Southwark in south London, was charged under the Modern Slavery Act with arranging the travel of the victim with a view to him being exploited between last August and May, Daily Mail reported.
In another charge, he was alleged to have conspired with the couple to arrange or facilitate the travel of the man with a view to him being exploited, namely organ harvesting.
Ekweremadu and his wife who have since denied any wrongdoing were taken to detention following their arrest at Heathrow Airport on June 21 after arriving on a flight from Turkey.
Following their arrest by the London Metropolitan Police, the duo appeared before a UK court which ordered that they should be remanded in custody till July 7 while investigations continued into the allegations against them.
While the Met police said the donor was 15, he was reported to have refused to consent to the procedure after undergoing tests at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, north-west London.
The Westminster Magistrates’ Court later ruled that the kidney donor was not a minor after confirming his age as 21.
The trio of Ekweremadu, Beatrice, and Obeta are due to appear at the Old Bailey on August 4.
