Televangelist Gilbert Deya of the ‘miracle babies’ infamy has been deported from United Kingdom to Kenya.
Mr. Deya, who was arrested in London by the Metropolitan Police on December 13, 2006 and faces child abduction and trafficking charges, arrived at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 4.40 am on Friday August 4, aboard a Kenya Airways flight.
A police spokesman said Mr. Deya was detained under an arrest warrant issued by Kenyan authorities, and was ordered by a court on November 8, 2007, to be extradited from the UK to Kenya to face five counts of child trafficking.
He is set to face child trafficking charges after being handed over to the Kenyan authorities following accusations that he coordinated the trafficking of children, who his church would later present as ‘miracles’ for barren mothers. Police also alleged that Deya stole five children between May 1999 and December 2004 from Pumwani Hospital to facilitate his ‘miracle babies’ project.
Earlier in 2005, Mr. Deya’s wife Mary Deya was handed a three-year jail term after she was found guilty of stealing a child from the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi. Mary falsely claimed that the baby was hers, but it was later confirmed that she had stolen it.
Deya was ordained by the United Evangelical Church of Kenya and styles himself ‘Archbishop’. He was an evangelist in Kenya in the late 1980s to early 1990s, but moved to the UK, establishing Gilbert Deya Ministries in 1997.
