Abuja – Nigerian state prosecutors have appealed a court ruling to discharge a separatist leader who had been facing trial for terrorism and treason, his attorney said on Friday.
Nnamdi Kanu is the leader of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) group, which agitates for a separate state for the ethnic Igbo people in southeast Nigeria.
He was detained overseas and flown back to Nigeria earlier this year.
A court last week discharged him, his lawyers said, because his extraordinary rendition back to the country had been illegal.
“The case is coming up on Monday, they are asking for a stay of execution of the judgement and they have filled the appeal,” Kanu’s lead attorney Mike Ezokome told AFP about the prosecution move to appeal.
“They are still keeping him in custody illegally and because of that we are also going to court with a new fundamental rights suit.”
The office of Nigeria’s attorney general and justice minister Abubakar Malami has said the appeal ruling was based on the rendition issue only.
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It said Kanu faces other issues that must be legally resolved.
Kanu, who is also a British citizen, was arrested in 2015 but jumped bail two years later, reappearing in the UK and Israel.
In June, Nigerian authorities said Kanu had been brought back to Nigeria to face charges, without giving details. Kanu’s family and lawyers said he was illegally brought back from Kenya.
Last week two of his lawyers said a court of appeal in the capital Abuja had acquitted and discharged him.
Demands for autonomy are especially sensitive in Nigeria, where ethnic Igbo officers declared independence for their southeast region in the 1960s, triggering a civil war that left around one million people dead from fighting and starvation.
Tensions in the southeast are still simmering, with occasional attacks against security forces and government offices.
Police have blamed IPOB’s military wing, the Eastern Security Network or ESN, but the group denies any involvement in the violence.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Twitter/@gaiuschibueze
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