Kenya: UK-based Pastor to Face Trial over Children’s Abduction
By Staff Writer
A self-styled Kenyan evangelical archbishop of church in Peckham, south London who claimed he could deliver "miracle babies" to infertile women in Britain is facing extradition to Kenya to face accusations of child abduction.
Gilbert Deya’s, 58, legal battle to stay in London to escape prosecution in Kenya has come to an end. He has been battling deportation since 2007, when the then home secretary, Jacqui Smith, rubber-stamped the decision to remove him from the country.
He is accused of abducting five children from a hospital in Kenya between 1999 and 2004.
UK Interior minister Theresa May, who has the final say on all extradition issues in Britain, ordered on Tuesday that the preacher be returned to Kenyan authorities after he exhausted all his avenues of appeal.
“On Tuesday September 13 the Secretary of State decided that Mr Deya’s extradition should proceed,” the Home Office said in a statement.
His lawyer, Mr Moses Odawa, Confirms that the televangelist is expected in the country by Friday.
Deya's removal from Britain marks the end of the long-running saga which saw him repeatedly claim in front of a devoted congregation and a sceptical media that he had helped give "miracle babies" to women who had been told they could not have children.
He made the headlines in 2004 when a BBC investigation probed his declaration that he had been able to make women pregnant "through the power of prayer".
In his interview with BBC, he 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." It is thought that more than 20 "miracle babies" were declared.
A warrant of arrest for Deya, was first issued seven years ago by the Kenyan police. He now faces five counts of abducting children aged between one and four.
His wife Mary is in jail in Kenya. In 2007, along with two other women, she was convicted of stealing a baby and spent two years in Langata women's prison in Nairobi. This January, she was sentenced to a further three years in prison for the theft of another child in September 2005. She was also found guilty on two counts of providing false information.
Deya's lawyers had argued their client faced a political vendetta in his home country and that to send him home would make him vulnerable to persecution. A Home Office spokesman said they had also claimed Deya's human rights would be breached by the conditions in a Kenyan jail.