The Daily Telegraph

Opposition leader ‘drugged and deported’ from Kenya

- By Adrian Blomfield in Nairobi

A PROMINENT Kenyan opposition figure was in hospital in the United Arab Emirates last night after he was allegedly drugged by security officials at Nairobi’s internatio­nal airport and forced on to a Dubai-bound flight.

Miguna Miguna had earlier been deported from Kenya for the second time in two months, in contravent­ion of a series of court orders.

Amid mounting concerns for the rule of law in the country, a judge found Kenya’s interior minister, its police chief and its outgoing head of immigratio­n guilty of criminal contempt for refusing to release Mr Miguna. But reflecting the mounting impotence of its judiciary, Justice George Odunga said there was little point in carrying out a threat to jail the three men.

Mr Miguna has emerged as one of Kenya’s most outspoken opposition leaders, after he helped preside over January’s mock inaugurati­on of Raila Odinga as the “people’s president” and was arrested on treason charges.

Defying numerous judicial orders to produce him in court, police secretly deported him to Canada, where he holds dual citizenshi­p.

After securing a ruling permitting him to return, Mr Miguna flew back on Monday, only to be denied entry despite three more rulings in his favour.

According to Mr Miguna, security officers burst into the lavatory in which he had been locked for three days yesterday morning, assaulted him and then injected him in multiple parts of his body with an unknown substance.

He then woke up shortly before landing in Dubai with Kenyan immigratio­n officers seated on either side of him. The stand-off threatened to spark an internatio­nal incident, with Canadian embassy staff in Dubai intervenin­g to take Mr Miguna to hospital.

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