Politics
By Anthony Isibor
TWO weeks after Bruce Fein, American lawyer to Nnamdi Kanu accused Catriona Laing, British High Commissioner to Nigeria of sabotaging the immediate, unconditional release of the IPOB leader, United Kingdom has dispatched an envoy to meet with their citizen who has been held in the Department of State Security, DSS, in Nigeria.
Heather Wilkie, British third secretary and vice consul in Nigeria, visited Kanu, leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, who has been remanded in DSS custody since his extraordinary rendition from Kenya on June 29, 2021, despite several court judgements and call for his unconditional release pursuant to the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Opinion No. 25/2022.
The visit of the envoy was made known by Aloy Ejimakor, Kanu’s special counsel, in a tweet on Friday, saying that Wilkie discussed issues bothering on Kanu’s health challenges and his continued extrajudicial detention by the Department of State Security, DSS,
According to Ejimakor, other issues the envoy discussed with Kanu cannot be made public.
Ejimakor’s tweeted: “UPDATE: I visited #MNK today in the company of SAN Machukwu-Ume & Barr Maxwell Opara.
“MNK confirmed to me a recent visit by the British Consul & that the matter of his extrajudicial detention & health were predominant.
“Other messages are legion but not for public consumption.”
Realnews recalls that in the letter dated February 10, 2023, Fein stated that there was evidence that Laing was “personally sabotaging Mr. Kanu’s unconditional release as mandated under jus cogens norms of international law binding on all nations irrespective of consent, accusing her of “taken cynicism and hypocrisy to a new level.”
“Your government has taken extreme umbrage at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s violation of international law in attacking Ukraine and committing war crimes. But you have made the UK complicit in flouting international law like Mr. Putin by affirmatively encouraging the Government of Nigeria to continue its illegal detention of Nnamdi Kanu. What is your ulterior motive? Oil and gas for the United Kingdom? Lucrative UK business arrangements?
“You and your country plunged to new depths. You go to war over the Falkland Islands thousands of miles from English shores with a tiny population of 3,500 to keep them free from Argentinian misgovernment. But Nnamdi Kanu, a British citizen, is abandoned to the cruel, lawless dungeon of Nigeria’s DSS.
“Have you no sense of decency? Have you a heart of stone unmoved by monumental injustice?” he queried.
In the letter, which was made available by Kanu’s Special Counsel, Ejimakor, Fein recalled that “on July 20, 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued a unanimous opinion addressing United Kingdom citizen Nnamdi Kanu’s kidnapping, torture, extraordinary rendition, and protracted detention without trial by Nigeria acting in collusion with Kenya.
Among other things, the Working Group Opinion had called on Nigeria “to take urgent action to ensure the immediate unconditional release of Kanu.
He also said that Paragraph 107, of the Opinion cataloged the serial human rights violations of Nigeria and Kenya regarding Mr. Kanu: ‘The deprivation of liberty…in contravention of articles 2, 3, 7, 8, 9,10, 11, and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and articles 2, 9, 13, 14, 16, 19, and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights….” Paragraph 105.”
A.I
Tags: Bruce Fein Catriona Laing Heather Wilkie IPOB Nnamdi Kanu
