Today at the High Court in Glasgow Justice Ngema, the man convicted for the kidnap of nurse Madeline Makola, was sentenced to a minimum eight year tariff. He will be subject to deportation if he is later released.

Ngema had robbed Makola and left her bound in her own car boot for ten days over Christmas 2008.

On sentencing Lord Menzies made the following statement in court:

“You have pled guilty to 14 charges on this indictment. None of these charges can be described as trivial, but clearly charge 2 is by far the most serious, and indeed 12 of the remaining 13 charges may be regarded as part of the same criminal course of conduct that includes charge 2. It is towards charge 2 that I propose to devote my attention now.

What you did to Madeline Makola was appalling. A lengthy narrative of facts was read over to the Court when you last appeared before me on 24th April 2009, and I do not propose to rehearse all the details here. What you did was to inflict a truly dreadful physical and mental ordeal on a young woman who had done you no harm at all, and whom you appear to have known only as an acquaintance. You attacked her in her own home, threatened her with a knife, compelled her to lie on the floor, and bound her wrists, feet and neck with rope. You covered her eyes and mouth and hands with wrapping tape. You threatened to pull the rope around her neck , you punched her repeatedly about her head, and you forced her to tell you the pin numbers of her bank and credit cards. You then dumped her in the boot of her own car and left her there, bound and gagged, with no food, water or heat for 10 days. You abandoned her there in the middle of winter, over the Christmas period. It is quite remarkable that she survived for so long - if the weather conditions had been different, or if she had not been so strong, she could easily have died. The medical evidence is that she would not have survived a further two days in the boot of her car, and even being left in a restrained position without movement for so long was a danger to her life. It must have been incredibly uncomfortable and terrifying for her - the stuff of nightmares.

When the police interviewed you later, you gave as your reason for this awful crime that your victim had disrespected you and not helped you. I cannot imagine a greater disrespect for another human being than the way you treated your victim - disrespect, and a complete disregard for her well being and her very life.

Your motive for doing this appears to have been purely monetary, to enable you to steal money from Ms Makola, and to obtain cash with which to buy Christmas presents and treats. What is particularly chilling is that throughout the ten days that your victim was locked in the boot of her car you appear to have behaved perfectly normally and calmly, as if nothing was happening which involved you. I refer to the Risk Assessment Report, in which your girlfriend's father is reported as stating that he did not notice any observable signs of tension, stress, anxiety or worry and that even whilst Ms Makola was locked in the boot of her car by you there was no change in your presentation in the home. Indeed, you seemed to enjoy the festive season's activities. The only time that your girlfriend's father remembered anything being said about the offence was when there was information about it on the News and your girlfriend's brother said to you that you should "watch out big guy" as the police had said they were looking for a male of black skin colour. Apparently you became unusually serious and said this was an inappropriate comment as you had a previous experience of mistaken identity. Another of your friends is reported as saying that she socialized with you one night in December 2008 after you had abducted Ms Makola, yet there were no noticeable signs of tension or discomfort evidenced by you. Your friend said she is now shocked when she remembers the lack of any emotional change in you considering your actions at that time.

The author of the Risk Assessment Report observed that you lack any empathy, you have an egocentric perception of the world and the offence, and you tend to externalise blame for your actions, minimising responsibility for your offending. She expressed the opinion that, if at liberty, you pose a high level of risk to the safety of the public at large. I cannot disagree with that opinion. You are a dangerous man, who poses a high risk to the safety of the public. I am satisfied that the risk criteria laid down in section 210E of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 are met, and I impose an order for lifelong restriction on you in terms of section 210F of that Act.

It is important that you, and the public, should understand the effect of this. It means that you will not be released from prison until such time as the Parole Board for Scotland, which includes persons far more expert than I am in the assessment of risk to the public, considers that it is safe for you to be released. It follows that you may never be released from prison. That is a decision for the Parole Board. However, the law requires me to specify a punishment part of that order. Again, it is important that you, and the public, should understand what is meant by a punishment part. It is not the same as the equivalent period of a determinate sentence. If you were sentenced to a determinate number of years imprisonment, you would be entitled to automatic early release having served a fraction of that sentence. This is not the case with a punishment part. The setting of a punishment part means that you cannot apply to the Parole Board for release from custody before the expiry of the whole of the punishment period, and it will be a matter for the Parole Board to consider whether you may be released safely at that time or not.

In this case, if you had not tendered pleas of guilty to these charges at the earliest opportunity by means of the procedure contained in section 76 of the 1995 Act, I should have imposed a punishment part of between 11 and 12 years. However, the law obliges me to discount that figure to reflect your early plea of guilty. In the result, and discounting that sentence as I am obliged to do, I fix the punishment part in your case at 8 years. I backdate that to 29th December 2008 to reflect the period you have already spent in custody.

I make it clear that I have reached this decision having had regard to all the matters raised on your behalf in mitigation and having regard also to the fact that you have no previous convictions recorded against you, at least in the United Kingdom. I also take account of the letter of apology to Ms Makola dated 8 July 2009, which I have seen. The sentence which I have imposed relates to charge 2. In all the circumstances I do not propose to impose any further sentence in respect of charges 1 and 3 -14 on the indictment; these are matters to which I have had regard when considering an appropriate disposal in respect of charge 2 and, as I have already remarked, they form part of the background to the events contained in that charge. I formally admonish you in respect of each of these charges.

You have been residing in the United Kingdom illegally since 2002. You arrived in this country in August 2001 and claimed asylum. Your application was rejected and you were removed from the United Kingdom by the Immigration Authorities in May 2002. You re-entered the United Kingdom in August 2002 using your brother's passport, and have stayed here illegally since then. In light of the terrible nature of the crime to which you have pled guilty in charge 2 of this indictment, I do not consider that it is appropriate that you should remain in this country after you have been released from custody, and I recommend that you should be deported in terms of the Immigration Act 1971 as amended, as soon as you are released”.