A controversial Kenyan televangelist, who claimed he created miraculous pregnancies, has been acquitted of child-trafficking prices on account of inadequate proof.
The prosecution didn’t show that Gilbert Deya stole 5 kids 20 years in the past, a Kenyan Justice of the Peace mentioned.
He had been accused of handing them to ladies struggling to grow to be pregnant.
The self-styled pastor was extradited from the UK in 2017, after his decade-long authorized battle to stay failed.
Considerations have been first raised concerning the conduct of Mr Deya, who ran a church in London, in a BBC investigation in 2004.
Ladies experiencing difficulties conceiving who attended the Gilbert Deya Ministries church in Peckham, south-east London, have been instructed they might have “miracle” infants.
However the infants have been all the time “delivered” in backstreet clinics in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
Mr Deya later moved to Scotland, and was arrested in Edinburgh in 2006 below a global arrest warrant issued by Kenya.
In his ruling on Monday, Justice of the Peace Robison Ondieki mentioned the prosecution had “failed to ascertain circumstantial proof”, the Star newspaper quotes him as saying.
Talking exterior court docket, Mr Deya mentioned that he had forgiven those that wished to see him in jail, Kenyan media report.
“The case tainted my title… however I am blissful that I am going again to the ministry …I am blissful that I have been acquitted,” he mentioned, in line with the Citizen web site.
He additionally hinted that he could search to return to the UK.