Congolese woman has been found guilty of child trafficking by a Belgian court

A court in Belgium has sentenced a Congolese woman to 14 years in prison after she was found guilty of child trafficking, according to reports from Belgian media.

Julienne Mpemba Kabuya, a Belgian citizen, faced allegations of facilitating the adoption of approximately a dozen children in Belgium, who were falsely claimed to be orphans and had been removed from their biological families in DR Congo.

On February 10, the Liege Court of Appeal found Mpemba, 48, guilty of hostage-taking, kidnapping, human trafficking, fraud, and forgery. Alongside the prison sentence, the court mandated her to pay a fine of €8,000 (approximately Rwf13.8 million).

In 2015, Belgian adoptive families welcomed Congolese children aged between two and five years old, as reported by The Brussels Times. Mpemba allegedly extracted extra funds from these families prior to delivering children she asserted were orphans.

The newspaper reported that Mpemba also provided children for adoption who had been taken from remote areas near Kinshasa and housed in an orphanage she managed.