Arbitrary Detention of Kanu: 'Your Silence Makes UK Pursuit for The Presidency Of UNSC A Joke' -- Bruce Fein Writes UK High Commissioner, Abuja

 Arbitrary Detention of Kanu:  'Your Silence Makes UK Pursuit for The Presidency Of UNSC A Joke' -- Bruce Fein Writes UK High Commissioner, Abuja

Bruce Fein

Bruce Fein, on Tuesday, 9 August, 2022, wrote to Catriona Wendy Laing, British High Commissioner to Nigeria. In the letter, Fein frowned at the British High Commissioner's silence over the United Nation's Working Group demand for the immediate release and compensation of Nnamdi Kanu the leader of Indigenous people of Biafra. Fein said "It is making the Great Britain's presidency of the United Nation's Security Council(UNSC) a joke".

In a form that appears like a rebuke for docility, the international legal counsel to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu accuses Liang of haven "idled" over the said demand from U.N working group, because she, Catriona Laing "cannot claim ignorance".

Recall that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People Of Biafra(IPOB) was in June 2021, kidnapped in Kenya by the Nigeria government, in collaboration with their Kenyan counterparts in what international legal experts calls “clean case of violation of international law.” Days later, the IPOB leader was extra ordinary renditioned to Nigeria, after being cruelly tortured in a private room for 8 days. 

“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”-Lawyer

“Kanu was in point of fact tortured and subjected to untold inhuman treatment in Kenya. He said his abductors disclosed to him that they abducted him at the behest of the Nigerian government,” Kanu's Lawyer.

Since his extra ordinary rendition to Nigeria Kanu has been illegally detained in solitary confinement at the Department Of State Services(DSS) in Abuja.

Just recently after a long silence, the U.N Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an order to the Nigerian government, demanding the immediate release and compensation of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. But the Nigerian government is yet to react accordingly. Worst still, Kanu holds British Citizenship, and deserves that the British High Commission do something positively to free their citizen from solitary confinement.

Kanu international legal lawyer Bruce Fein, wrote to the British High Commissioner, describing her Commission's behaviour as “embarrassing the UK and cause of human rights”, for doing nothing to ensure the release of the IPOB leader. Fein also requested that the Commissioner promptly inform him on steps being taken to secure Nigeria’s compliance with the Working Group Opinion, calling for Nnamdi Kanu’s immediate, unconditional release and reparations.

The letter, which was made available to Family Writers Press International by Kanu’s special counsel, Barr Aloy Ejimakor, with subject:  “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 Britain 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.”

Ogah C.S Maduabuchi, reporting

For Family Writers Press International.