Gilbert Deyas flight to Kenya on extradition is not a question of if but when. It is unlikely he will fly in this helicopter branded with his name. Photo/FILE
By GITAU wa NJENGA in LONDON Posted Saturday, November 7 2009 at 22:30
The long-awaited extradition of controversial London-based Kenyan preacher Gilbert Deya may happen soon, the Sunday Nation has learnt.
Impeccable sources confirmed that the preacher, who is wanted in Kenya on child-trafficking charges, is now a failed asylum seeker currently ordered to report weekly to Deptford police station in South London.
The new details of Mr Deyas complex and costly legal tussle emerged on November 2, after it became apparent that he had exhausted all avenues of appeal in the United Kingdom. It is believed legal costs amounted to more than £1 million (Sh124 million).
Deyas extradition is not a question of if but when. Hes living on borrowed time; the net is finally closing in; he could be extradited from London before Christmas, said a well-placed source.
He may be extradited to Nairobi under the Extradition Act 2003 on the request of the Kenya Government. The televangelist, who runs his Gilbert Deya Ministries from Ormside Road, Peckham, South London, with 34,000 followers, is now subjected to the Immigration Act 1971 legislation that gives immigration officers power to detain a person who has been served notice of administrative removal from the UK.
He applied for political asylum in the UK in September 2004 claiming his life was in danger following reports that Kenyan authorities wanted to question him over child-trafficking allegations. The British Home Office turned down the application in 2006 although Mr Deya appealed the decision, forcing him to maintain a low profile until his dramatic arrest at a Sheriffs Court in Scotland in June 2006.
In January 2008, the then British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith ordered Mr Deya to be extradited to Kenya over the alleged miracle babies scandal, but he moved to the High Court to challenge the extradition order. After the High Court in London dismissed his appeal, Mr Deya took his case to the Court of Appeal.
On November 27, 2008, two Court of Appeal judges sitting at the Royal Courts of Justice in London refused to grant him permission to appeal to the House of Lords against the order to extradite him to Kenya. House of the Lords served as the court of last resort in most instances of UK law until October 1, 2009, when this role was assumed by the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
At the hearing of Case No CO/11637/2007 of Deya vs Government of Kenya (2008) at the Administrative Court of the Court of Appeals Civil Division, the Kenyans lawyers argued that his case should be certified as one raising issues of general public importance that should be considered by the Law Lords, but this was rejected by Lord Justices John Dyson and Griffith Williams who heard the appeal.
The Kenyan preacher said he would take the appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), but it emerged on November 3 that Deyas legal team in London did not make the move as previously believed.
Extensive enquiries at ECHR offices in Strasbourg, France, confirmed that Mr Deya didnt lodge an application to challenge the UKs extradition order. We dont have an application in respect of Mr Deya at the ECHR, said Celine Menu-Lange, an ECHR official in an email to the Sunday Nation on Tuesday.
Mr Deya is wanted in Kenya on five counts of abducting children aged between 22 months and four-and-a-half years between 1999 and 2004. His wife Mary Deya and two other women Miriam Nyeko and Rose Kiserem were jailed for two years in May 2007 by a Nairobi court for stealing a child.
The decision whether to extradite Mr Deyas will be made by the UK Home Secretary Alan Johnson. A Home Office spokeswoman told the Sunday Nation: We dont comment on extradition matters because of legal and security reasons.
In fighting extradition, Mr Deya has argued that he is the victim of a political vendetta in Kenya and said his human rights would be compromised by the poor conditions in Kenyan prisons. He said that before he came to Britain in 1996, he had publicly condemned the then Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi. Speak against him and you will be killed, he said, adding that if I return, I will not receive a fair trial and I will be punished.
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