Kashamu’s extradition: CSO writes Obama

The Coalition of Civil Society Group yesterday revealed that it has formally written to the United States of Ameri­ca’s President, Barrack Obama, condemning the planned extradition of businessman and sena­tor-elect, Prince Buruji Kashamu.

It described the plot as an act of abduction, torture and impunity not tenable in Unit­ed States and international laws.

Addressing newsman in Abuja, the group’s President, Etuk Bassey Williams, said the process had been found damaging. “It is imperative that the war against terror or any other illegality is con­ducted within the rule of law otherwise those fighting such crimes will lose their moral authority to do so,” he said.

The group said rendition, which is the legal process of sending a suspected criminal to another country to be in­terrogated or detained, usu­ally for law-enforcement pur­poses, been condemned by the United States president during his 2008 presidential campaign.

The letter read in part: “The high rate of erroneous renditions clearly defines its failure thereby making the need for an alternative to be inevitable. It is in lieu of this that we propose that the technique of empathy and non-torture as used by former FBI counter terror agent, Ali Soufan, which has been very effective to be adopted in ad­dition to developing other tactical and operational tra­decraft.”

The coalition listed why it was against the policy, say­ing: “Amnesty International had criticised European countries and the US for op­erating contrary to basic legal principles and has called on the US to put an end to ren­dition, conduct independent and thorough investigations in the practice.

“The high rate of errone­ous renditions, ineffective­ness of coercive interroga­tion, and the reason that it instigated an unwarranted war in Iraq, make the practice undesirable.”

The group said the US remained the undisputable hope of the world, imploring it to re-evaluate how it imple­mented the policy on a tacti­cal, operational and strategic level.

Kashamu’s lawyer had raised the alarm over alleged moves by the United States government to extract his cli­ent, a move Kashamu said was the handiwork of oppo­nents.