Former Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu’s 25-year-old daughter, Sonia, was denied an exemption from her parents’ UK trial.
Sonia’s bid to avoid trial alongside her parents for “conspiracy to harvest organs” was denied by Justice Johnson.
Sonia, 25, and her mother Beatrice were in the dock. Ike Ekweremadu watched through video.
He remained immobile as the court concluded that Sonia was not unfit to face a “criminal trial spanning seven weeks” as her defense attorney, Femi Oni, had claimed.
The Crown prosecutor and Sonia’s counsel relied on expert witness testimony in court.
After filing the stay application? she’s unfit? Both sides’ expert witnesses testified via video connection, starting with Oni’s Manchester-based professor.
After swearing in, the defense questioned him, “Did you confer with her before making his report?”? Yes? Asked if he has a report on ? what she’s suffering from?? The professor told the court that? she?s developed from a young age, a kidney condition? that led to progressive malfunction and that? her life is reliant on dialysis therapy until she obtains a kidney transplant.?
He testified that dialysis had psychological, emotional, and physiological effects on her as well as other patients.
The professor used a consultant psychiatrist’s report.
Davies’ specialist was Dr. Andrews.
He confessed not having directly spoken with Sonia but said she might face trial provided the court schedule was altered to afternoons to accommodate her treatment days. Andrew testified that? the lingering effects of dialysis do not make it difficult to attend the trial.?
After listening to the barristers and their expert witnesses, including their reports, and acknowledging that the treatment takes its toll on her and that she had to withdraw from her Masters’s degree program after her diagnosis, the judge said it is not confirmed that her recovery or clinical care would suffer if she stood trial.
Thus, he rejected the application.
