The lawyers of the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu has given more details of how Kanu was kidnapped in Kenya, tortured for eight days before he was handed over to Nigerian security operatives.
Kanu’s lawyer Aloy Ejimakor, made this known after visiting him in a DSS detention centre in Abuja.
He said that Kanu was held in a nondescript private facility and chained to a bare floor
He went to say that no warrant of arrest was shown to him or even mentioned to him. And for the eight days he was held incommunicado, nothing was presented to him before a court or transferring him to an official detention facility was ever mentioned.
He said, “I went to visit him on Wednesday and went with two forms. One was the consular consent form that the British High Commission required that he signs to consent to consular assistance. There was also a form from his counsel in the UK. The firm is known as Bindmans, one of the largest law firms in the UK.
“The forms will open a whole new chapter of legality, including the filing of a Writ of Mandamus, against the Nigerian government in a UK court to compel it to produce Kanu, because his detention is illegal under the British law. It was an extraordinary rendition, which is an international crime by which a state kidnaps a suspect or a fugitive without the due process of law.
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“They will be filing all these processes in the UK and there is a prospect of a UK court assuming universal jurisdiction or extra-territorial jurisdiction and reaching into Kenya so that they can arrest every Kenyan official, either authorised or not, and every Nigerian official involved in this case.”
“Kanu said he was flown to Abuja in a private jet on Sunday, June 27, 2021, from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, and that he was the lone passenger.
“The plane departed Nairobi around 12pm and arrived in Abuja in the evening.
“Kanu was tortured and subjected to untold cruel and inhuman treatment in Kenya. He said his abductors disclosed to him that they abducted him at the behest of the Nigerian government.
“Despite that, they told him they felt committed to hand him over to those that hired them.
“According to Kanu, no warrant of arrest was shown to him or even mentioned to him. And for the eight days he was held incommunicado, nothing of presenting him before a court or transferring him to an official detention facility was ever mentioned. He was held in a nondescript private facility and chained to a bare floor.
“Kanu was interviewed for the first time in my presence by three DSS officers. The interview was revealing as it contained certain new allegations that were never heard of before. But all the questions relate directly or indirectly to his status as the leader of IPOB.”
“The interview was revealing as it contained certain new allegations that were never heard of before. But all the questions relate directly or indirectly to his status as the leader of IPOB.
“I observed that despite what he has passed through, he was in high spirits and looked forward to overcoming the extraordinary rendition that brought him to Nigeria.
“In my assessment of how the case now stands, I wager that before any court can subject Kanu to trial for any offences, it has to first conduct a trial within trial on the grievous incident that forced him to leave Nigeria and the equally grievous incident that forced him back to Nigeria,” he said.
“No court of law, conscience and equity will overlook those two incidents and proceed to trial,” Ejimakor said.
