The UK has extradited a self-styled Kenyan pastor, who claimed he created miraculous pregnancies, to Kenya to face child-trafficking charges.
Gilbert
Deya's extradition came after he failed in his decade-long legal battle to
remain in the UK.
He
denied charges of stealing five children between 1999 and 2004 when he appeared
in court in Nairobi.
Concerns
were first raised about the conduct of Mr Deya, who ran a church in London, in
a BBC investigation in 2004.
Infertile or post-menopausal women who attended the
Gilbert Deya Ministries church in Peckham, south-east London, were told they
could have "miracle" babies.
But the babies were always "delivered" in
backstreet clinics in Nairobi, Kenya's capital.
Mr Deya later moved to Scotland, and was arrested in
Edinburgh in 2006 under an international arrest warrant issued by Kenya.
His Gilbert Deya Ministries is being investigated by
the UK Charity Commission for alleged mismanagement.
"Our statutory inquiry into Gilbert Deya
Ministries is ongoing. We are currently considering the implication of Gilbert
Deya's extradition on our investigation," the commission said in a
statement.
- A
former stonemason who moved to London from Kenya in the mid-90s
- Set
up the Gilbert Deya Ministries as a registered charity, with African and
Asian branches
- Known
for his blend of charismatic, performance-style preaching
- Had
income of £652,800 ($858,000) for the financial year ending December 2015
- Spent
£609,300
- Described
by UK Labour MP David Lammy as a "modern-day snake-oil salesman"
- Says
he was consecrated as an Archbishop by a US evangelist in 1992
When the BBC asked Mr Deya during its 2014
investigation how he explained the births of children with DNA different to
that of their alleged parents, the 65-year-old Mr Deya said: "The miracle
babies which are happening in our ministry are beyond human imagination.
"It is not something I can say I can explain
because they are of God and things of God cannot be explained by a human
being."
Kenya's police spokesman Charles Owino told the BBC
that Mr Deya had arrived in Nairobi aboard a Kenya Airways flight following his
extradition.
Mr Deya had opposed his extradition, saying he
feared being tortured and sentenced to death.
In 2007, his wife, Mary, was sentenced to two years
in prison in Kenya after being convicted of stealing a baby.
In 2011, she was sentenced to three years in jail
after being convicted of stealing another child.
Desperate women, some past the menopause and others
who were infertile, were convinced that being prayed for by Mr Deya and
travelling to Kenya would result in a child.
Once there, they were convinced by Mrs Deya and
others that they were experiencing labour and taken to illegal clinics where
they believed they had given birth.
But they were actually given babies which had been
taken from local women.
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