Kenyan cleric Gilbert Deya has said that he will not travel to Nairobi to answer child-trafficking charges.
Speaking during a 15-minute telephone interview Tuesday, the evangelist who runs the Gilbert Deya Ministries (UK) said he won’t come back to Kenya from his London base, because God had not asked him to.
“I am not coming (to Kenya) because God has not allowed me to come. He sent me to England. He is the one who can sanction my coming to Kenya,” Archbishop Deya said. He insisted that he did not make the trip to the UK as a tourist or a refugee but went there to preach.
The cleric- whose claim that he could deliver ‘miracle’ babies to infertile and post-menopausal women-also noted that so far there has been “no sufficient evidence to warrant his extradition".
The Home Office has already sanctioned the extradition, but on Tuesday Archbishop Deya insisted that after investigations by “the Scotland Yard” and the British Intelligence, no sufficient evidence had been found to stand scrutiny in court.
“I am free here…Kenyans want extradition; but the authorities here have seen that I am innocent on all charges levelled against me,” he said.
He said he was happy that he was abroad, because, had he been in Kenya he would be in jail.
“I thank God because I am abroad. if this were not the case, I’d be in Kamiti,” the preacher said.
He added that after seeing his wife, Mrs Mary Deya, convicted and sent to prison without “sufficient evidence” he won’t risk a date with Kenya’s Judiciary or even the country’s authorities.
“If I come, do I have the power to stop you from sending me to prison? I don’t! How will I stop you from putting me (sic) in Kamiti (Maximum Security Prison)?” Mr Deya posed.
“There is no any evidence, sufficient evidence, that you can put to me (to show that I committed the crimes as it has been alleged),” he said. He said the only thing that can make him honour any date with the Judiciary is if he there was a person, “a father or a mother saying that I stole his child”.
“Kenya has not got anyone who owns the children,” adding that if the parents were present and there was a matching DNA records proving parenthood, then that would be enough to make him pack his bags and take the trip back to Nairobi to face the courts.
It is alleged that he stole five children between 1999 and 2004.
His “miracle babies” scam came to light in 2004 when his conduct was aired on the BBC Radio 4 investigative programme “Face the Facts”.
It was alleged that infertile or post-menopausal women who attended his church in Peckham, South London, were told they would have “miracle babies”.
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