A UK court has ordered a former hospital director to pay £25,000 ($41,000) to a Tanzanian woman she kept as a virtual slave.
Mwanahamisi Mruke, 47, was flown from Tanzania in 2006 and forced to work 18-hour days for no pay for Saeeda Khan, 68, at her home in Harrow, northwest London.
Ms Mruke was brought to the UK after getting a job at a hospital in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania which Khan owned, the BBC reported.
Khan told her that she would work six hours a day and that her daughter in Tanzania would be paid Tsh120,000 ($66) a month, equivalent to £50 ($82).
But the court heard how Khan only gave her two slices of bread a day and ordered her around by ringing a bell she kept in her bedroom.
After paying her an initial allowance of £10 ($16.4) a week, this allowance was stopped.
Moreover Ms Mruke was kept as a virtual slave in the home, had her passport taken away and was not allowed to leave the house.
She was not even allowed to return to Tanzania when her parents died and her daughter got married.
The four year ordeal was brought to an end when Ms Mruke went to a doctor over problems with varicose veins and exhaustion.
The judge at Southwark Crown Court, who also gave Khan a suspended nine-month prison term, said she was guilty of “the most appalling greed.”
Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC said Khan had told “a pack of lies” during her trial by saying her victim, whom he described as “naive and illiterate,” was treated as part of the family.
The judge said that only Khan’s age, the fact she has two adult disabled children and was in poor health had prevented him from passing an immediate custodial sentence.
During the trial, jurors heard Miss Mruke was denied her passport and liberty and endured the ordeal to support her daughter through college in Africa.
Ms Mruke said she could “never forgive” her captor for her four-year ordeal.
“I felt like a fool, I was treated like a slave,” Ms Mruke said.
Ms Mruke is now pursuing a civil claim against Khan.
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