The arrested Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader Nnamdi Kanu’s American-based attorney, Bruce Fein, has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to free the pro-Biafra activist immediately and described the detention of the IPOB leader as kidnapping while claiming that the Nigerian government, earlier headed by President Muhammadu Buhari, exemplified lawlessness.
Bruce Fein demanded that Kanu be released from detention in accordance with the Working Group’s order from the United Nations Human Rights Council in an open letter to President Tinubu titled, “Continued Criminal Detention of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu,” dated September 23, 2023. Fein claimed that Kanu’s continued detention is illegal and criminal.
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Fein stated: “You confront a choice between becoming a firefight or being the fire. The former would crown you with a possible Nobel Prize. The latter could consign you to Dante’s Seve Circles of Hell as portrayed in his Divine Comedy. You would become a firefighter by immediately ending the criminal, illegal detention of Nnamdi Kanu as ordered by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and Nigeria’s Court of Appeal over a year ago.”
“On multiple occasions, the Nigerian government denied me the right to meet with my client or to be present in the courtroom to observe Nnamdi Kanu’s proceedings and to consult (but not to act as a licensed Nigerian practitioner).
“Nnamdi Kanu is every bit as much the leader of Biafrans as Nelson Mandela was for South Africa’s blacks.”
Fein advised President Tinubu to follow the lead of the F. W. de Klerk administration in South Africa, which “released Nelson Mandela from Robben Island and negotiated an end to black subjugation.”
He said, “for his political courage, vision, and magnanimity, President de Klerk was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 jointly with Mandela,” adding: “Persisting in the wrong thing will bring you no respite. In the matter of Nnamdi Kanu’s release from criminal detention, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream will never die until fulfilled.”
