Child trafficking spreads

2004-09-01 13:04

Nairobi - A child-trafficking probe in Kenya has spread to Britain and three African nations, police in Nairobi said on Wednesday.

"We have casted out nets wide to probe other countries. We want to reach the bottom of this children case," national police spokesperson Jasper Ombati said, as more parents turned up claiming they had lost their newborn children at the country's largest maternity hospital.

The African countries were Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda, said another police official who requested to remain unnamed.

Nairobi's Pumwani Maternity Hospital, the largest gynaecological facility in the country, is under investigation for alleged trafficking, after several couples reported that they had lost their infants there, Ombati said.

The widened probe comes as DNA tests failed to link eight children to Mary Juma Deya, wife of a British-based Kenyan tele-evangelist, Gilbert Deya, who claimed that she bore them "through prayers rather than copulation", police said.

"Of the nine children claimed by Mrs Deya, DNA tests shows that only one is related to her," said a Criminal Investigations Department officer.

Last week similar tests failed to link 11 other children with another woman, Eddah Odera, who also claimed that she bore them though Juma Deya's prayers.

All these children, between three months and 14 years, are currently in the custody of the government's children department, and police are working to identify their real parents.

"About 24 out of 50 couples who have turned up to claim their new born babies, complain that they lost them in Pumwani," Ombati said, adding that a former matron at the hospital had been arrested.

On Monday, Juma Deya, Odera and three other people were charged in a Nairobi court for stealing two children from Pumwani hospital and Nakuru in 2000 and 2004 respectively.

- AFP