A legal practitioner, Onyedikachi Ifedi, has condemned the ongoing terrorism trial of Biafra agitator, Nnamdi Kanu, describing it as a judicial betrayal of the African Charter on human and peoples’ rights.
Kanu, who was forcefully returned to Nigeria from Kenya in 2021, is standing trial before Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court in Abuja.
But Ifedi insists the prosecution is unlawful because the African Charter, domesticated as part of Nigerian law, expressly prohibits extraordinary rendition and inhuman treatment
In a statement on Thursday, the lawyer argued that any trial arising from Kanu’s abduction is unconstitutional, null, and contrary to binding precedent.
“To allow a prosecution tainted by kidnapping and torture to proceed against the Biafran leader is expressly forbidden by the Charter and confirmed by the larger constitutional bench of the Supreme Court of Nigeria”
Ifedi faulted the December 15, 2023 judgment of a five-man panel of the Supreme Court which ordered Kanu back for trial, insisting that a seven-man panel of the same court had earlier ruled that the illegal abduction and transfer of a person across borders without due process invalidates prosecution
