Independent NG
The lead counsels of the embattled leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has accused the Department of State Services (DSS) of punishing detainees who dare interact with Kanu in the custody.
Kanu’s lawyers who frowned at the “maltreatment” of their client said “despite a court order to the contrary, the condition of his detention at the DSS headquarters in Abuja continues to be harsh, degrading and inhumane.
Speaking in a statement titled, ‘Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s detention condition at the DSS amounts to torture’, and jointly signed by Ifeanyi Ejiofor and Aloy Ejimakor on Thursday stated that the leader of the outlawed group instructed them to make the following information public.
The statement partly read, “That he is solitarily confined to a very tiny cell twenty-three (23) hours of the day without access to sunlight and any social interactions whatsoever. He believes that this is aimed at inflicting extreme emotional and mental distress on him and breaking him psychologically.
“That any detainee who encounters and greets him during the single hour he is allowed outside his cell is promptly put in solitary confinement or transferred to maximum security as a punishment for exchanging mere greetings with him. Because of this, detainees have resorted to avoiding him and exchanging salutations with him, not to talk of any other form of social interactions.
“That since the Nigerian government extraordinarily renditioned him, he has not been allowed a change of clothing; and his Jewish prayer shawls and other religious materials brought to him by his counsel were rejected and returned.
“That the DSS has refused to replace his corrective glasses (lenses) which were smashed to smithereens by agents of the Nigerian government in the process of the violence they unleashed on him while abducting him in Kenya. This has led to a rapid deterioration of his sight…
