Kashamu files fresh suit to stop extradition

The senator representing Ogun East, Mr Buruji Kashamu, has
commenced a fresh suit to stop the Federal Government from
extraditing him to the United States to face trial for alleged drug
offences.

Kashamu filed the fresh suit before the Federal High Court in
Lagos through his new lawyer, Mr Rickey Tarfa (SAN).

He explained that the suit was inspired by a May 13, 2018 report
by The PUNCH, titled, “Kashamu: FG demands fresh US request for
extradition suit.”

He said in the report, the Attorney General of the Federation,
Mr Abubakar Malami (SAN), was quoted to have said that, “The US
government has been told to make a fresh request for the senator
after the former extradition proceedings were dismissed. As soon as
the US government sends a fresh request, the new extradition
proceedings will be commenced.”

The senator said he believed that the statement reportedly made
by the AGF was further to a letter dated July 14, 2016 with Ref.
No. CAU/EXT080/15, “written on the instructions of the AGF, under
the hand of one Shehu A. Bodinga of the Central Authority Unit of
the Federal Ministry of Justice to the ambassador of the United
States to Nigeria.”

According to him, in the said letter, the AGF had stated that,
“Given the dismissal of the application for extradition of the
suspect by Justice Kolawole, we can only bring up the case by
filing a fresh extradition application, should the Court of Appeal
rule in our favour.

“In this regard, the US Department of Justice needs to process
and resubmit a new (original) extradition package, which is
required under our laws, for the adjudicating judge’s file.”

But Kashamu, in his affidavit, maintained that he was not the
person wanted for narcotics offences in the US, adding that the
British court had in 2003 exonerated him.

He said, “The position is that the respondents are well aware
that the applicant was not involved in the alleged narcotics
offence committed in the US in 1994 and that the British court has
exonerated the applicant of any such complicity in the proceedings
brought against the applicant by the US authorities in London from
1998 to 2003.

“The Federal Government of Nigeria, represented by two officers
of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Dan Asebe Umaru and
Femi Oloruntoba, had given evidence at the second of the said
proceedings instituted in England by the US authorities against the
applicant at the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court between 2002 and
2003, that the applicant was not the person implicated in the
alleged narcotics offence committed in the US in 1994 and District
Judge Time Workman had consequently found in his judgment that the
extradition matter, delivered on the 10th of January 2003, that the
applicant was not the person sought by the US authorities.”

Kashamu said he was also exonerated by Lord Justice Pill at the
High Court in the Hebeas Corpus.

He, therefore, argued that the US government having not appealed
against the judgment, any attempt to extradite him to the US was an
illegality.