Nnamdi Kanu’s American Lawyer Petitions ICC, Wants Malami, Justice Nyako Charged For Crimes Against Humanity, Others

Bruce Fein, the American counsel for the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has filed a petition against the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, and Justice Binta Nyako to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Fein, an international lawyer and spokesperson for Kanu, addressed the petition to Karim Khan, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, in The Hague, asking the ICC to charge Malami and Nyako with “conspiracy and crimes against humanity against Biafrans and their leader Nnamdi Kanu by protracted and systematic resort to murder, extermination, imprisonment, torture, rape, persecution based on political, religious, and ethnic grounds, and industrial-scale theft of property including an ongoing attempted judicial murder of Nnamdi Kanu”.

In the document obtained by SaharaReporters on Wednesday, Fein said, “In October 2020, five human rights experts of the United Nations Human Rights Council asked President Buhari within 60 days to submit evidence of Mr. Kanu’s terrorism. Mr. Buhari sneered at the overture, probably reflecting, ‘Being a tyrant means you never need to obey the law.’”

It said “Kanu is seeking a Biafran sovereignty,” adding that a referendum is not special pleading.

“South Sudan voted independence from Sudan in a 2011 referendum. The United Kingdom recently afforded Scotland a secession vote and may do so again. Ditto for Canada and Quebec.

“The United States periodically permits Puerto Rico to vote between statehood, independence, or commonwealth status. The legal and moral case for Biafran independence is overwhelming,” he said in the 23-page document.

Stating Malami and Nyako’s “crimes against humanity”, Fein said they include “kidnapping, torture, extraordinary rendition and indefinite arbitrary detention of Nnamdi Kanu in the ongoing attempted judicial murder”

It reads in part, “As an integral part of the ongoing crimes against humanity described above, on or around June 2021, Attorney General Malami conspired with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigerian Federal High Court Justice Binta Nyako, and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, among others, to kidnap and torture Biafran leader Nnamdi Kanu in Nairobi, Kenya, for several days, and then subject him to illegal extraordinary rendition to Abuja, Nigeria.

“There, for more than nine months, Nnamdi Kanu has been detained in solitary confinement in extremely confined quarters and denied necessary medical care and legal counsel without a trial with the illegal imprimatur of co-conspirator Justice Binta Nyako. The conditions under which Nnamdi Kanu is subsisting satisfies the definition of torture under the Convention Against Torture, Article 1 paragraph 1.

“Attorney General Malami has conceded that Nigeria’s security agencies were involved in Nnamdi Kanu’s abduction, torture, and extraordinary rendition but has attempted to whitewash the crimes with the falsehood that the International Police Organization (INTERPOL) was a collaborator. The extraordinary rendition in violation of Kenya’s extradition provisions, which was effectuated by the use of a private aircraft, could not have been accomplished without the knowledge and consent of co-conspirator President Kenyatta, who himself has been previously accused of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

“Judges, like co-conspirator Justice Binta Nyako, are not shielded from criminal prosecution for crimes against humanity based on participation in patently illegal show trials. Neither are prosecutors like arch-conspirator Attorney General Malami. The precedent was set in the “Justice Case” of the post-World War II Nuremberg trials, United States v. Joseph Altstetter, et al.