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 .
AFP
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