Directors of labor export companies face a 15-year prison sentence over a Ugandan domestic servant whose kidney was removed in Saudi Arabia.
The directors of Nile Treasure Gate, a labor export organization that took a Ugandan migrant worker whose kidney was removed while working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, have been remanded to Kitalya prison by the Chief Magistrates Court in Nakawa, Kampala.
Judith Nakintu was hired as a housemaid by Nile Treasure Gate Company in 2019 and flew to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on December 12, 2019.
Nakintu, however, lost her right kidney in suspicious circumstances while working as a housemaid for Saad Dhafer Mohamed Al-Asmari at King Fahad Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
While authorities in Saudi Arabia claimed she was paralyzed in an accident, a medical test and subsequent report conducted in Uganda revealed that her right kidney had been removed.
Two directors of the labor export company, Abubaker Sulaiman Kato, 33, Mariam Muhammad, 31, Salma Muhammad, 43, a board member, Ali Hassan Male, 18, an agent, and Jeniffer Milly Nalunga, 32, a supervisor, were charged on Friday afternoon with aggravated trafficking in persons in violation of sections 3(1)(a) and 4(i) of the Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act 2009.
“Between December 2019 and October 2021, the group and others still at large between Kampala district of Uganda and Saudi Arabia organized, facilitated, and made preparations for sending to receiving or confining Judith Nakintu by means of fraud or deception or abuse of power of a position of vulnerability for the purpose of removing a body part or organ,” the trial magistrate read the charges.
Nakintu was also accused of being recruited, facilitated, and transported to Saudi Arabia for the purpose of exploitation, which resulted in her being mutilated and suffering from a life-threatening sickness.
Two Nile Treasure Gate Company directors, a board member, an agent, and a supervisor were also charged with conspiring to enable and transfer Judith Nakintu through fraud, deception, and the misuse of vulnerable positions for the girl’s exploitation.
The group rejected the charges, but state prosecutors Doreen Erima and Joseph Kyomuhendo informed the court that the case is still under investigation.
The trio was remanded until March 14, 2022 by Nakawa Chief Magistrate Elizabeth Akullo Ogwal.
The directors, agent, and supervisor of Nile Treasure Gate Company covered their faces during the court proceedings for fear of being recognized.
Denial
The company’s directors have refuted charges that they conspired to ship Nakintu to Saudi Arabia, where she died of kidney failure.
Nakintu, a single mother of five, told how she was rushed to hospital on the fateful day for a Covid vaccination and only woke up hours later with a wound on her lower belly after being returned home paralyzed.
She eventually became paralyzed.
While she assumed that one of her kidneys had been removed, a Saudi Arabian medical report revealed that he had been involved in an accident that left her paralyzed.
While in Uganda, she was subjected to another medical examination, which revealed that her right kidney had been removed from her body.
The rule of law
According to Section 3(1)(a) of the Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act 2009, a person who recruits, transports, transfers, harbours, or receives a person for the purpose of exploitation through the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or vulnerability, or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, commits human trafficking.
