Staff Writer
A Nairobi court on Monday exonerated a Kenyan evangelical pastor accused of snatching children who were presented as “miracle babies,” the result of his prayers. There was insufficient proof, the court found.
Former stonemason Gilbert Deya, who relocated to London in the 1990s, was charged with kidnapping five kids between 1999 and 2004.
However, 86-year-old Gilbert Deya was declared innocent by Robison Ondieki, a magistrate in a Nairobi court, who decided that the prosecution had not provided enough proof.
Assuring the media that his client was “very happy,” the reverend’s attorney, John Swaka, told AFP that the accusations were “fabricated and could not be brought before a court.”
After a nearly ten-year court battle, Gilbert Deya, a church owner with properties in London, Liverpool, and Nottingham, was deported from Britain to Kenya in 2017.
The reverend and his wife Mary asserted that through prayer, menopausal or infertile women might become pregnant in four months without engaging in sexual activity.
The prosecution claimed that the infants had indeed been stolen, the most of them from the maternity department of Pumwani Hospital in Nairobi, a working-class neighborhood of the capital.
Kenya is a country in East Africa that is primarily Christian. According to official statistics, there are about “4,000 churches” in Kenya, including those led by self-declared pastors who lack theological qualifications.
A group that practiced fasting in order to “meet Jesus Christ” was linked to the bodies of followers discovered in April, raising concerns about the need for more control of churches.
The Shakahola woodland on the Kenyan coast is where around 400 dead have so far been discovered. Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, a 50-year-old former cab driver and the sect’s leader, is charged with terrorism.
