Ike Ekweremadu, 60 (right), his wife Beatrice, 56, and Dr Obinna Obeta, 50, have been jailed. Picture: Met PoliceA wealthy Nigerian politician and his wife have been jailed for plotting to traffic a young man to the UK to harvest his organ for their sick daughter in a legal first.

Following a landmark modern slavery case, multi-millionaire Senator Ike Ekweremadu, 60, his wife Beatrice, 56, and medical "middleman" Dr Obinna Obeta, 51, were found guilty at the Old Bailey in March.

Their victim, a poor street trader in Lagos, was brought to the UK to provide a kidney for the Ekweremadus' 25-year-old daughter Sonia.

He fled in fear of his life and walked into a police station exactly a year ago to report what had happened after the Royal Free Hospital called a halt on the private £80,000 procedure.

In a televised sentencing on Friday, Mr Justice Johnson recognised Ike Ekweremadu's "substantial fall from grace" as he jailed him for nine years and eight months.

Beatrice Ekweremadu was jailed for four years and six months and Obeta for 10 years.

The senior judge said: "People-trafficking across international borders for the harvesting of human organs is a form of slavery.

"It treats human beings and their body parts as commodities to be bought and sold.

"It is a trade that preys on poverty, misery and desperation."

He told the defendants: "You each played a part in that despicable trade."

On the question of harm to the victim if the intended transplant went ahead, he said: "He would have faced spending the rest of his life with only one kidney and without the requisite funding for the required aftercare."

He added the risks had not been properly explained and there had been no consent "in any meaningful sense".

During the hearing, the victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said he only found out what was planned when he was taken to the north London hospital for an initial consultation.

In a statement read to court: "I would never (have) agreed to any of this.

"My body is not for sale."

He spoke of his fears for his own safety and that of his family in Nigeria who had been visited and told to "drop" the case.

He said: "I cannot think about going home to Nigeria.

"These people are extremely powerful and I worry for my family.

"Even though I live here in the UK at the moment I know I need to be careful too.

"I have no-one here, no family, no friends." By By Asher McShane, LBC

Opposition leader Raila Odinga has been denied entry into Shakahola forest in Kilifi County where bodies of over 100 members of a cult have been recovered.

The cult's leader Paul Makenzi is said to have lured his followers into praying and fasting for long periods of time "so they can meet their maker".  

While some of the victims, who included children, died from starvation, there are those who died from strangulation, according to autopsy reports. 

And on Friday, the commander of the operation investigating the deaths, Mr Peter Ndung’u, asked Raila to seek permission from the Inspector General if he wanted to access the forest. 

“I want to access the forest so that I can be able to see the graves, I can't travel all the way and go back without seeing the scene,” Raila said. By Marion Kithi, The Standard

The head of Vladimir Putin’s Wagner Group “private army” threatened on Friday to pull his troops out of the eastern town of Bakhmut after a ferocious bust-up with Russian army chiefs.

Yevgeny Prigozhin said his forces would on May 10 leave the Ukrainian town which has seen some of the fiercest fighting in Europe since the Second World War.

He made the announcement after unleashing a tirade against Russian army chiefs for not supplying his mercenary soldiers with enough munitions, displaying the bodies of several of them in a video to highlight how they are being slaughtered leading the fight for Bakhmut.

Prigozhin said: "I declare on behalf of the Wagner fighters, on behalf of the Wagner command, that on May 10, 2023, we are obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the defence ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds. 

"I’m pulling Wagner units out of Bakhmut because in the absence of ammunition they’re doomed to perish senselessly."

Wagner has been spearheading Russia’s attempt to capture Bakhmut since last summer, in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war in Ukraine.

Putin has made it a prized aim to seize the town.

But Ukrainian military chiefs surprised defence analysts by deciding to fight to hold onto the town, despite it having no strategic importance.

Keeping control of it has now, though, taken on symbolic importance.

It was not clear if Prigozhin will see through his withdrawal threat or whether he is just seeking to pile pressure on Russian army chiefs to give his forces more ammunition.

But his anger was clear in an expletive-filled video published early on Friday in which Prigozhin, surrounded by dozens of corpses he said were Wagner fighters, yelled and swore at Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

He said they were to blame for Wagner's losses because they had starved it of ammunition.

The clash between Putin’s military chiefs came as Ukraine is on the brink of launching a major counter-offensive to try to recapture land seized by Russia since the invasion in February 2022.

The White House estimates 20,000 Russian soldiers, including from the Wagner Group, have been killed since December as Putin and Prigozhin have thrown units into “meat grinder” battles, mainly to try to capture Bakhmut.

The West has supplied Ukraine with tanks, including British Challenger IIs, as well as long-range artillery for its counter-offensive.  By Nicholas Cecil, Evening Standard