Ejimakor Writes AGF To Initiate Prosecution Of Those Culpable In Kanu’s Torture  

Barr Aloy Ejimakor, special counsel to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Monday, petitioned the attorney general of the federation, Mr Abubakar Malami, SAN, to initiate the prosecution of persons complicit in the torture of his client in Kenya and Nigeria.

Kanu was arrested in Kenya and brought to Nigeria last year in a manner his legal team said violated his fundamental human rights and international law.

Ejimakor in the petition, entitled ‘RE: Mazi Nnamdi Kanu: Criminal Complaint of Torture and Request for Investigation and Prosecution’, said the petition was anchored on Section 1 (a) and (b), Section 5, Section 6 of the Anti-Torture Act 2017; and Section 174 of the Constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999.

According to the petition, “Section 5 of the Anti-Torture Act provides that a person who has suffered or alleges that he has been subjected to torture shall have the right to complain to and to have his case promptly and impartially examined by a competent authority, and that the competent authority shall take steps to ensure that the complainant is protected against all ill-treatment or intimidation as a consequence of his complaint or any given evidence.”

Also culpable, according to the petition, is anybody ‘who actually participates in the infliction of torture or who is present during the commission of the act’, as well as ‘a superior military, police or law enforcement officer or senior government official who issues an order to lower ranking personnel to torture a victim for whatever purpose is equally liable as the principal’.

Ejomakor quoted Section 1 of the Anti-Torture Act, which states that, “The rights of all persons, including suspects, detainees and prisoners are respected at all times and that no person placed under investigation or held in custody of any person in authority shall be subjected to physical harm, force, violence, threat or intimidation or any act that impairs his free will.”

The special counsel recalled that information privy to him shows that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu visited Kenya on his British passport on May 12, 2021.

According to him, “On June 19, 2021, our client drove himself to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, on a personal errand. As soon as he alighted from his vehicle, about twenty well-armed persons abducted him, handcuffed him, blindfolded him, bundled him into a vehicle and sped away.

“His abductors took him to a secret private location (not a police station) and chained him to the floor. He was neither shown a warrant of arrest or extradition, nor told why he was abducted. The abductors did not tell him who they are but from their conversations, he surmised that they were working for the Government of Nigeria (GON).

“While chained to the floor, his abductors took turns torturing him to the point that he fainted several times and was intermittently revived. During the tortures, his abductors taunted him, and called him a ‘separatist Igbo Jew’. They also told him he will be ‘expelled to Nigeria to face death’. He was chained to the floor for eight days and was thus forced to relieve himself of urine and excrement where he was chained.”

Throughout his detention, according to the petition, Kanu was not allowed to bathe and ‘was fed only on bland bread once a day and given non-sanitary water to drink’.

The special counsel claimed that, “The inhuman treatment which the abductors subjected our client and the injuries he sustained therefrom coupled with his pre-existing poor health made him live in terror that he was going to die in captivity.

“His anguished entreaties to his abductors to get him some medication for his hypertension, heart condition and physical injuries were inhumanely refused and his pleas to be taken before a court or any law enforcement facility or allowed a phone call were flatly refused.”

The petition revealed that while in detention, Kanu’s detainees were in constant telephone conversations with the Nigerian High Commissioner to Kenya and other Nigerian officials.

The petition added that Kanu was later ‘put in a car, drove straight to the tarmac of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, where they evaded Kenyan immigration and forcibly bundled him into a private jet that departed the airport before noon on June 27, 2021’ en route to Abuja.

It added that, “Throughout the duration of the flight from Nairobi to Abuja, our client’s wrists and ankles were manacled so tightly that he was in extreme pains. He also had the muzzle of a gun pointed to, and roughly rubbing the nape of his neck throughout the duration of the flight.”

According to Ejimakor, “On arrival in Nigeria, our client was detained at the headquarters of the Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA) in Abuja. He spent the first night at the NIA detention facility, sleeping on the floor with very bright electric bulbs deliberately left on throughout the night, thus causing him extreme bodily heat, sleep deprivation and mental anguish.

“Our client states that, from 29th June 2021 to date, he has been subjected to solitary confinement, lasting for 23 hours each day at the headquarters of the State Security Services in Abuja. Since then, our client has repeatedly requested independent medical examination by a physician of his own choice but the requests were denied.”

Ejimakor said such denial was against Section 7 of the Anti-Torture Act, adding that the Government of Kenya ‘publicly denied complicity in the abduction, torture and extraordinary rendition of our client, and asserted in judicial proceedings that there was no extradition, expulsion or deportation proceedings against our client anywhere in Kenya.”

Ejimakor posited that ‘the totality of what happened to our client as enunciated above unarguably met the definition of Torture under Section 2 of the Anti-Torture Act, 2017, which states at Section 9(1) that “A person who contravenes Section 2 of this Act commits an offence and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 25 years”.’

He therefore prayed the AGF to initiate the prosecution of those culpable in the alleged torture.