A Kenyan televangelist accused of stealing children and presenting them as “miracle babies” has been extradited from the UK to face trial in his home country after a ten-year legal fight.
Gilbert Deya and his wife, Mary, claimed that their prayers could help infertile women to become pregnant without intercourse. He allegedly stole babies from a state maternity hospital in Nairobi. Fifty Kenyan women reported losing their children at the height of the scandal.
Mr Deya, 64, a self-styled archbishop, moved to Britain in the 1990s to start the Gilbert Deya Ministries in Peckham, south London, which has about 36,000 British members.
His wife remained in Kenya and allegedly helped him by stealing babies. She was convicted of one charge of child abduction and is serving a three-year prison sentence.
Nairobi applied for his extradition in 2007 but he launched a flurry of appeals under human rights laws, claiming that he could face the death sentence.
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Last year a High Court judge described his delayed extradition as scandalous and ordered that the case be fast-tracked.
Mr Deya arrived in Nairobi yesterday morning and was taken directly to the city’s Milimani law courts to face five charges of trafficking children between 1999 and 2004, which he denies.