A Nigerian couple has been sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa after being convicted of human trafficking.
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) reports that the couple was also charged with keeping a brothel.
Thirty-four-year-old Jude Ijegulu and his partner, Elizabeth Botes, 29, from Centurion in Pretoria, were sentenced by the Pretoria high court.
Ijegulu was sentenced to two life terms on two counts of rape and a further two years for being in the country illegally.
Prosecutors told the court that Ijegulu and Botes ran a brothel in Centurion from November 2016 to September 2017, where they kept two women.
“The man raped the two women and supplied them with drugs, as well as physically and sexually assaulting them,” Lumka Mahanjana, national prosecuting authority spokesperson, said.
“The couple would also instruct the two victims to render sexual services to clients.
“The judge found that the two violated the Human Trafficking Act. The man enslaved the two victims and fed them drugs.”
The court ordered that Ijegulu’s name be added to the national register of sexual offenders.
