Nnamdi Kanu’s International Counsel Writes UK High Commissioner Over Non-Release Of IPOB Leader

Bruce Fein, international counsel to the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Tuesday, described British high commissioner to Nigeria as ’embarrassing the UK and cause of human rights’ for doing nothing to ensure the release of the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who is being detained in the custody of the Department of the State Services.

Fein made the demand in a letter he wrote to the high commissioner which was made available to our correspondent by Kanu’s special counsel, Barr Aloy Ejimakor.

The letter is entitled ‘RE: Immediate, Unconditional Release of U.K. citizen Nnamdi Kanu, U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Opinion No. 25/2022’.

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’.

He said, “The Working Group Opinion called upon Nigeria ‘to take urgent action to ensure the immediate unconditional release of Mr. Kanu’.”

He quoted offences committed to Kanu as catalogued in Paragraph 107 of the Opinion to include: “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….”

The letter read in part, “The villainous maltreatment of Nnamdi Kanu by Nigeria and Kenya prompted the Working Group to refer his case to Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. Paragraph 109.

“More than one month has elapsed since the unambiguous Working Group Opinion. Nigeria has sneered at the Opinion as nothing but a scrap of paper like Belgium neutrality scorned by Germany in World War I to which Britian responded with war.”

He recalled that the UK in the time past ‘fiercely defended its citizens against lawlessness by foreign nations’, and ‘fought the War of Jenkins Ear in 1739 with Spain over an amputated ear of a British Captain by Spanish coast guards in the West Indies’.

He further state that, “Nnamdi Kanu is a British citizen. He has suffered far more than Captain Jenkins at the hands of Nigeria and Kenya as corroborated and held by the U.N. Working Group.

“Yet you have done nothing to secure Mr Kanu’s immediate and unconditional release as mandated by international law. Indeed, you have idled like Nero fiddling while Rome burned. You cannot claim ignorance.

“The United States is moving heaven and earth to obtain the release of a United States basketball player from Russia after she pled guilty to a drug violation. It has offered to trade a notorious imprisoned arms trafficker Viktor Bout in exchange for Britney Griner’s freedom.

“Nnamdi Kanu, unlike Mr Griner, is innocent. He has not been convicted of any crime. Indeed, he is a victim of multiple crimes perpetrated by Nigerian and Kenyan authorities. Yet you and your superiors continue to permit Mr Kanu to suffer in a Nigerian dungeon in flagrant violation of international law.”

He made analogies between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Nigeria’s treatment of ‘Biafrans’, and warned that, “Russia’s attack on Ukraine is a tea party compared with Nigeria’s ongoing genocide of Biafrans—the Holocaust sans the gas chambers.

“It is not acceptable under law or God that Great Britain would declaim against the former and ignore the latter. Your silence is making Great Britain’s presidency of the United Nations Security Council a joke.

“I regret the resort to language outside the customary euphemisms of diplomacy. But justice for Nnamdi Kanu and 70-80 million Biafrans is too important to be left to ambiguous clues or semaphore.

“I request that you inform me promptly of the steps you have taken or contemplate taking to secure Nigeria’s compliance with the Working Group Opinion calling for Nnamdi Kanu’s immediate, unconditional release and reparations. Nothing would gratify me more than for you to earn an honored chapter in the annals of human rights and international law.”