A court in Belgium has sentenced to 14 years in prison a Congolese woman found guilty of child trafficking, Belgian media reported.

Julienne Mpemba Kabuya, who has Belgian citizenship, was accused of facilitating the adoption of around a dozen purportedly orphaned children in Belgium, who had actually been taken away from their biological families in DR Congo.

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The Liege Court of Appeal on February 10 ruled that Mpemba, 48, was guilty of hostage-taking, kidnapping, human trafficking, fraud, and forgery. In addition to the prison term, the court ordered her to pay a fine of €8,000 (approx. Rwf13.8 million).

In 2015, Belgian adoptive families welcomed Congolese children aged between two and five years old, The Brussels Times reported. Mpemba is said to have extorted additional money from these families before handing over children she claimed were orphans.

The newspaper reported that Mpemba also offered children for adoption who had been abducted from remote areas near Kinshasa and placed in an orphanage managed by her.