Pimps requesting deportation back to Nigeria ‘deserve jail’

TWO Nigerian pimps who ran a brothel in Arcadia, Pretoria, will know their fate in September after their lawyer yesterday called on a judge to give them suspended sentences so that they could be deported back to Nigeria.

In terms of the law, a life sentence is the maximum penalty for human trafficking charges. This is what the prosecution has called for.

One of the men’s victims, a former prostitute who cannot be identified in terms of an order of the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, said her captors deserved jail for the rest of their lives.

The petite young woman was one of two former prostitutes who testified against the men – brothers Obioma Benjamin Abba, 32, and Chinedu Justine Obasi, 38.

They said it was extremely difficult to break away from the life of drugs and prostitution, but they wanted to turn their lives around.

Both had been rehabilitated from drugs and already had good jobs. But during the trial they were under the State’s witness protection plan for their own safety.

They could not face their pimps in court as they were too afraid. They testified about their dark lives on the streets via closed-circuit television from an adjacent room.

One of the women at court yesterday is heavily pregnant and has found new love.

She is expected to give birth in October but vowed to be back for sentencing on September 18.

“I want to get closure by witnessing the court speaking the last word,” she said.

Defence lawyer Heinrich Moldenhauer asked Judge Ronel Tolmay to have mercy on his clients, as “this was not the worst kind of human trafficking”.