By Adadainfo
Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, has urged the Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to recommend to the United Nations Security Council to ‘consider suspending Nigeria from the United Nations for persistently violating the Principles of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. His demand followed Nigeria’s refusal to release him ‘unconditionally’ as earlier recommended by the group, and the judgement of Nigeria’s Court of Appeal on October 13, 2022.
This was contained in a letter written by Mr Bruce Fein, international counsel and spokesman for Nnamdi Kanu, to the Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention based in Geneva, Switzerland. The letter was made available to the media by Aloy Ejimakor, Kanu’s special counsel, who assists Bruce Fein from his location in Nigeria.
Mr Fein referred to the group’s 20 July 2022 Opinion regarding Nnamdi Kanu, stating that Kanu’s non-release meant ‘contemptuous defiance’. The letter alleged that President Muhammadu Buhari and Attorney General Abubakar Malami are the ‘chief culprits’.
According to Fein, ‘The Opinion found that Nnamdi Kanu’s detention, following kidnapping, torture, and extraordinary rendition, violates sixteen international human rights covenants, and called on the Government of Nigeria to take urgent action to ensure the immediate unconditional release of Mr Kanu.”
The letter added that, “Since the Opinion was issued three months ago, the government has steadfastly refused to release Mr Kanu from his indefinite arbitrary detention in solitary confinement without access to necessary and urgent medical care.
“The Government’s open and notorious lawlessness has been compounded by its equal scorn for an October 13, 2022, decision by the Court of Appeal of Nigeria, [which] held that Nnamdi Kanu’s extraordinary rendition from Kenya by the Government of Nigeria was illegal.”
Fein stated that Attorney-General Malami had refused to release Mr Kanu from detention in violation of the Court of Appeals’ decree, ‘which constitutes the crime of false imprisonment by the Attorney General himself’.
Mr Kanu, in the letter, prayed the Working Group to inform the Human Rights Council of ‘Nigeria’s violation of the above-referenced Opinion and serial violations of law generally as regards himself’. Fein recalled, in the letter, that South Africa was in a like manner suspended by the United Nations General Assembly over its apartheid policies, adding that “International peace and security are threatened if a nation with impunity is permitted to kidnap, torture, and then subject to extraordinary rendition a citizen of a different nation while travelling abroad.”
Quoting him, “Nnamdi Kanu is a citizen of the United Kingdom who was kidnapped and tortured by Nigeria while travelling in Kenya before his lawless extraordinary rendition.”
Our correspondent reports that Kanu is currently being detained at the headquarters of the Department of State Services in Abuja, and charged, among others, with running a proscribed group, jumping bail and treason.
