The lawyer to Nnamdi Kanu, who leads a banned group seeking a breakaway state in south-eastern Nigeria, has told the said that he has visited his client for the first time since his arrest more than two weeks ago.
Alloy Ejimako said the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob) leader looked unwell with bruises on his hands and the back of his head.
He sold BBC that Mr Kanu, who is being held in a facility run by Nigeria’s secret police, had told him that he had been detained and tortured in Kenya before his extradition last month.
Mr Kanu, who faces treason-related charges, fled Nigeria in 2017 while on bail – but was detained last month after his extradition from a country the authorities have refused to name.
Speculation that he was arrested in Kenya was denied at the time by Kenya’s high commissioner to Nigeria.
Mr Ejimako said his client told him that he had been kept in a private facility in Kenya and had been chained to a bare floor for several days.
He alleged that he had been beaten, tortured and kept incommunicado before being handed over to the Nigerian authorities.
Neither the Nigerian government nor the Kenyan authorities have reacted to these allegations.
Mr Kanu, 53, founded Ipob in 2014 – the latest group advocating a country for Nigeria’s ethnic Igbo community.
In 1967 Igbo leaders declared independence for the state of Biafra, but after a civil war, which led to the deaths of up to a million people, the secessionist rebellion was defeated.
His trial resumes on 26 July.
BBC
