Woman jailed in UK for smuggling baby

A woman who smuggled a baby from Nigeria in a bid to get a free flat was jailed in Britain for 26 months today.

Peace Sandberg, (40), described as “manipulative and a stranger to the truth” by the judge, is believed by police to have paid £150 (€188) for the three-month-old boy in her native country.

She then used a forged birth certificate to get a visa for him from the British High Commission there.

Within hours of landing at Heathrow, the woman, a Kensington Housing Trust support worker who had been living in a hostel, was at Ealing Council’s homeless persons unit.

She claimed she had returned to Africa in December 2006 to give birth and now needed a flat for herself and her “son”.

But London’s Isleworth Crown Court heard Sandberg was recognised by a housing officer, who remembered Sandberg not being pregnant two months earlier.

Sandberg denied any wrongdoing, claiming she had adopted her cousin’s orphaned son to give him a better life in Britain. But the court took just 40 minutes to unanimously convict her of child trafficking.

PA

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