Miguna’s route back to Nairobi starts at courts

Lawyer Miguna Miguna. He was deported from Kenya. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The government explained that he had renounced his Kenyan citizenship and acquired Canadian nationality.
  • On Wednesday, Chief Justice David Maraga warned that such blatant disregard for court orders was a “dereliction of public duty”.

Even before he stepped on Canadian soil on Wednesday, deported activist Miguna Miguna started plotting his journey back to Kenya, which he said will start in court.

Mr Miguna, who was bundled into a KLM flight to Amsterdam on Tuesday evening and escorted all the way to Toronto by two security guards, is accused of taking part in an illegal assembly to “swear in” Nasa leader Raila Odinga as the "people’s president".

The government explained that he had renounced his Kenyan citizenship and acquired Canadian nationality, but Mr Miguna maintained that he is Kenyan, and that he will be back.

“I will challenge all the illegal and unconditional actions by the despots in court starting today,” he said.

“I have instructed a battery of competent advocates to ensure that the ongoing rogue purveyors of impunity are brought to book. They are not above the law, even though they behave as if they are.”

VALID PASSPORT
Lawyers will have to examine the question of dual-citizenship and whether Mr Miguna qualifies for it as he was granted his Canadian passport before the Constitution allowed one to pledge alliance to two states.

The team said it will move to court next week to quash the deportation order “as our first line of attack”.

“We are getting ready,” lawyer Nelson Havi told the Nation last evening.

“We will move to court next week to challenge the deportation order.”

He said he was “extremely confident” of their chances in court as they could prove that Mr Miguna was born in Kenya and had held a valid passport since March 2009.

“The only nationality Miguna can lose is Canadian because he acquired it later. He was born here, and that can never be taken away from him,” Mr Havi said.

“The government cannot wake up one morning and say that a passport he has held for nine years is illegal.”

CITIZENSHIP
The government claims Mr Miguna lost citizenship after acquiring a Canadian passport in 1988 after his application for a Kenyan one was denied on September 1987, soon after he was expelled from the University of Nairobi; but Mr Miguna says he has never rejected his Kenyan roots, and that his citizenship by birth is an eternal, irrevocable right.

The Ministry of Interior said that while Mr Miguna acquired a Kenyan passport on March 2009 under the orders of then minister Otieno Kajwang’, such orders were illegal as he did not disclose his Canadian citizenship.

“Miguna failed to apply to regain his Kenyan citizenship after the new Constitution came into force, and therefore continued to be a Canadian citizen,” Mr Mwenda Njoka, the ministry’s spokesman, said.

But the fiery lawyer, known for annihilating his co-debaters on NTV’s AM Live morning show, said he has “never, ever renounced” his Kenyan citizenship.

“The Constitution is crystal-clear: No one can invalidate or purport to cancel the citizenship of a Kenyan-born citizen.

"So (Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred) Matiang’i has no authority — and I didn’t request him — to ‘take me home’ as he shamelessly claimed,” he said in a statement from Amsterdam as he awaited his connecting flight.

PLANE
A picture of the deportee in red slippers slid into swollen feet summed up what has been five days of high-octane drama, ignored court orders, and, in the end, a revoked citizenship.

In the picture, Mr Miguna slants in his KLM plane seat, his right leg crossed over his left, and in the same suit he wore when he was arrested on Friday last week.

“I have been treated like a beast,” he told the BBC moments before he boarded his plane from Amsterdam to Toronto, Canada.

In the five days he was held incommunicado, he continued, he was treated “so badly” that he was given food only twice and was not allowed sleep as he was kept standing in police cells.

TORTURE
He said he had not taken a shower since Friday, and that his feet were swollen, presumably from the standing and the lack of sleep.

At one time in the five-day ordeal, he narrated, he complained of pneumonia and asked to be taken to hospital. The request was denied.

“I have been tortured,” he summed up the ordeal.

Towards the end, as Mr Miguna was being moved from one police cell to another, High Court Judge Luka Kimaru, sitting at the Milimani courts in Nairobi, was making order after order, first ordering Mr Miguna’s release, and when that did not happen, ordering that he be produced before him in person, and by none other than Inspector-General of Police Joseph Boinnet and Director of Criminal Investigations George Kinoti.

COURT ORDER
His orders were ignored, and as he sat in court on Tuesday waiting for Mr Miguna to be brought in so he could release him, the activist was being driven to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for deportation.

On Wednesday, Chief Justice David Maraga warned that such blatant disregard for court orders was a “dereliction of public duty”.

“Compliance with court orders is not an option for any individual or institution. Neither is it a favour to be doled out to the Judiciary. Rather, it is a crucial matter of constitutional and civic obligation,” Mr Maraga said.

In Canada, Mr Miguna’s wife, Jane, told of her anguish and horror as she read of the arrest and detention of her husband.

At some point, she told Canadian news magazine Macleans, the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi could not tell her whether her husband was alive or dead.

“That really worried me, because the commissioner was not even able to get information from the Kenyan government to assure her that they are holding him and he’s alive,” Mrs Miguna said.

— Additional reporting by Silas Apollo