A United Nations judge was convicted on Thursday of trafficking a young woman to the United Kingdom and forcing her to work as a slave.
Ugandan judge Lydia Mugambe, 49, “exploited and abused” the victim, prosecutors said, forcing her to work as an unpaid maid and caregiver while barring her from seeking other employment. A jury found Mugambe guilty of multiple offenses, including facilitating illegal immigration, forced labor, and witness intimidation, the Independent reported.
Mugambe was a fellow housed within Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, whose fellows work to “address some aspect of a history of gross human rights violations in their society, country, and/or region,” in 2017.
Columbia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mugambe became a judge on the U.N. International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in May 2023, even though police had been called to her home in Oxfordshire three months earlier, according to the Independent. Mugambe was studying for a law Ph.D. at Oxford at the time.
A jury agreed with the prosecution’s case that Mugambe, who also serves as a judge on Uganda’s High Court, conspired with Ugandan diplomat John Leonard Mugerwa in a “very dishonest” quid pro quo. Mugerwa, the prosecutors said, arranged for the Ugandan embassy to sponsor the victim’s entry into the United Kingdom under false pretenses, while Mugambe attempted to influence a judge overseeing a case in which Mugerwa was involved.
Mugambe denied the charges, insisting she always treated the young woman with “love, care, and patience,” the BBC reported.
Update 4:28 p.m.: This piece and headline have been updated since publication.