NIAMEY: The head of parliament in Niger will be interrogated as part of a probe into international baby-trafficking, sources said on Wednesday.
Hama Amadou is suspected of "complicity" in the trafficking of babies born in Nigeria and trafficked into Niger via Benin.
But Amadou, who is considered the leading challenger to President Mahamadou Issoufou ahead of elections in 2016, has denounced the charges as politically motivated and said it would involve a breach of his parliamentary immunity.
One of Amadou's wives is among the 17 people, including 12 women, already arrested in the case since June.
"We think that for the honour and respectability of our institution, he must make himself available to the judicial authorities," said Mohamed Ben Omar, a member of parliament's political bureau, which authorised the investigation into Amadou.
"We must not risk breaking the equality of citizens before the law. In the same case, Nigerians are languishing in prison for months," he said.
"It is with a heavy heart that we have taken this difficult decision, but we consider that it's our duty," added Daouda Mallam Marthe, a vice-president of the National Assembly with the ruling Niger Party for Democracy and Progress (PNDS).
The opposition has denounced the investigation as a breach of parliamentary rules, which do not allow "an office of the National Assembly to deliver a deputy to justice or to have him arrested," said Tidjani Abdoulkadri, of the Democratic and Social Convention party.
Hama Amadou is reportedly planning to appeal to the Constitutional Court to look into the legality of the order.
The alleged crime involves forging and altering birth certificates to switch the names of mothers. Agriculture Minister Abdou Labo, a wife of Amadou, was arrested on Saturday.
"The trafficking network is used primarily by couples who are unable to have children," a source close to the case told AFP earlier this year.
"Baby factories" private clinics where young girls sell their newborns to couples who are unable to conceive are regularly uncovered in Nigeria.
Cases in which mothers give up babies born from rape have been reported at such clinics, but young women facing unwanted pregnancies are more common, according to the Nigerian authorities.
The newborns are sold for several thousand euros with boys fetching more than girls. The mothers receive around 150 euros ($200).
The impoverished country of Niger has the highest birth rate in the world, an average of 7.6 children per woman.
In 2012, Niger police uncovered a fake orphanage where babies were sold on, some for use in black magic rituals.
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