Britain extradites 'miracle baby' pastor to
Kenya
Friday
August 4 2017
By Agencies
Televangelist Gilbert Deya was
extradited to Kenya Friday from Britain to face charges for allegedly stealing
children and presenting them as "miracle babies" born due to prayer,
police said.
The scandal first broke in 2004 as
it emerged Deya and his wife Mary claimed their prayers could see infertile and
post-menopausal women fall pregnant in four months, and without intercourse.
However the "miracle
babies" were allegedly stolen, mainly from Nairobi's Pumwani Maternity
Hospital.
Kenya plans to charge Deya with five
counts of abducting children aged between 12 months and four-and-a-half years.
The children were allegedly
kidnapped between 1999 and 2004 in Kenya.
His wife is already serving a
three-year jail term on similar charges.
Deya's extradition was first ordered
in 2007, after he exhausted all avenues of appeal.
Then-interior minister Theresa May
instructed he be returned to Kenya in 2011. It is unclear why it has taken six
years for him to be sent back.
The controversial preacher landed
back in Nairobi before dawn, and investigators "are preparing to take him
to court", said inspector general of police Joseph Boinnet.
Deya has been running his Gilbert
Deya Ministries operation from Peckham, south London. His church's website says
it has a membership of more than 34,000 in Britain.
He claims he was consecrated as an
archbishop in the United States in 1992.
According to local media Deya was an
evangelist in Kenya in the late eighties and early nineties, before he moved to
the UK to set up his ministry.
