Miguna Miguna. He landed in Nairobi on March 26, 2018. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
Fiery lawyer and self-declared National
Resistance Movement general Miguna Miguna on Monday spent the night in
the cold at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.
This
was after he flatly rejected government’s attempts to re-deport him to
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a country in which he said he was not born
and has no relatives or business associates.
DRAMA
The
government rejected Dr Miguna’s return to Kenya and attempted to
re-deport him to Canada after a nine-hour stand-off at the airport.
But
Mr Miguna refused to board the Dubai-bound Emirates flight, triggering
probably the most dramatic scenes ever witnessed at JKIA in recent days.
“I
am not going anywhere….where is my luggage? Where is my passport? You
cannot take me from my country by force,” he remonstrated as the
commotion delayed Flight EK 722 bound for Dubai.
So violent were the scenes that the pilot of
the plane took time to listen to the hostile passenger police had
bundled into his craft.
“I’m a Kenyan citizen by birth,” he told the attentive pilot, whose name the Nation could not immediately establish.
“These
court orders say I must be in this country,” he went on as he
brandished High Court orders that directed his return to Kenya after he
was violently deported to Canada.
“So why are they pushing you in,” the pilot enquired.
“Because of politics,” Dr Miguna responded. “They are scared of me."
'NO WAY'
He proceeded to give reasons why he would not allow the pilot to take off with him.
"Now you, as captain, is (sic) not allowed to fly me anywhere against my will," he said.
"First
of all, I don’t have a passport, secondly I didn’t book your plane,
thirdly I don’t have status in Dubai … so how am I gonna go to Dubai? I
don’t live in Dubai, I don’t work in Dubai, I have no connections to
Dubai. So I’m not going to Dubai.”
He
wrapped up his account to the pilot and his passengers with a call to
action to the police, who had attacked and chased away journalists: “Let
them kill me… Let them kill me… let them go ahead and do it.”
“They
cannot chase me like a pig when I have court orders. I was born here…
some of these guys were not born here… they are just thugs that have
been hired. They have chased the media like rabbits. They are shooting
at the media.”
Dr Miguna had been
forcibly whisked to the aircraft by a contingent of about 40 police
officers in full view of ODM leader Raila Odinga and his lawyers John
Khaminwa, Cliff Ombeta and Julie Soweto.
Another group of officers laid siege at the airport, beating up journalists to scare them from capturing the drama.
Dr Miguna was grabbed and literally carried to the aircraft that had been delayed for the purpose.
More follows.
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