The government last evening ‘deported’ outspoken National Resistance Movement (NRM) champion Miguna Miguna to Canada. Mr Miguna was put into a KLM flight leaving Nairobi for Amsterdam minutes to 10pm, according to his lawyer John Khaminwa.
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol’s website showed that the KLM flight that departed from Nairobi on Tuesday night is scheduled to arrive at 06:30 (8.30am Kenyan time). This means he has already arrived in Canada.
The official government newsroom said on Twitter, ‘‘Miguna is headed home. The court ordered he gets released and the interior ministry obeyed the orders and even assisted him with a flight ticket home”.
Lawyer Nelson Havi said: “We are informed that Miguna Miguna has been forced into a KLM flight for deportation to Canada. Now, how do you deport a Kenyan? This Country has been overrun by criminals.”
Interior ministry said Mr Miguna, who dared the government to arrest him last week with his signature phrase ‘come baby come’, had denounced his Kenyan citizenship years back. The government has obeyed his request in kind but told him, ‘Go baby go.”
“Mr Miguna denounced his Kenyan citizenship years back, acquired Canadian citizenship and never bothered to reclaim Kenyan citizenship in the legally prescribed manner neither did he disclose that he had another country’s citizenship despite being a lawyer who should have known better,” interior ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka said.
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He added that Mr Miguna ‘renewed his Canadian passport on 16th June 2017. It is not clear what law the government used to eject him from Kenya as the Constitution guarantees him citizenship since he is Kenyan by birth. The Interior Ministry is expected to give a detailed statement in the morning.
He said when Mr Miguna was arrested, the Canadian government had written to Kenya expressing concerns that their citizen was being harassed and they wanted him back.
Mr Miguna Tuesday narrated how he was held incommunicado for five days without access to his family or a lawyer following his arrest last Friday.
He said police officers humiliated him by locking him up in conditions “unfit for human existence.”
Mr Miguna was speaking at the Kajiado Law Courts where he was taken after his arrest last Friday on suspicion of taking part in a ceremony in which opposition chief Raila Odinga was sworn in as the people’s president on January 30.
Reports of his deportation come hours after High Court Judge Luka Kimaru barred the Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI) and the Inspector General (IG) of the police from preferring any criminal charges against him.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations then said Mr Miguna was arrested after he confessed to administering NASA leader Raila Odinga’s ‘oath’ and for being a member of an illegal organisation – the National Resistance Movement (NRM). (Additional reporting from Nation.co.ke)
