A former Governor of Delta State, Chief James Onanefe Ibori, has dragged the United Kingdom to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, in a bid to quash his conviction by a London court.
The attestation papers, filed in this respect, were received by the European court on April 16, 2019.
The
foundation of Ibori’s appeal, according to the papers filed by his
counsel, rests on his claim that Britain disobeyed its own laws all in a
rush to get him convicted.
His counsel argued that “this
application concerns an unusual provision of United Kingdom law: s17 of
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (‘RIPA’).
According
to the former governor’s counsel, “it prohibits any reference, in any
proceedings, to an intercepted communication or its contents- e.g. an
intercepted phone call – in circumstances in which its origin as an
intercepted communication is disclosed or could be inferred. The United
Kingdom is virtually unique in having such a provision: intercepted
communications are used routinely as evidence in court proceedings
throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
Ibori’s counsel
alleged that the “operation of Section 17 of RIPA, as applied in the
highly unusual circumstances of his case, resulted in a violation of
Ibori’s rights pursuant to Article 6 of ECHR”.
He further argued
that this actually is the crux of the matter, because Britain’s failure
to obey its own laws has rendered every other thing that followed,
including his guilty plea later, defective.
Ibori went on appeal
after pleading guilty. But his counsel said, in the appeal papers filed
at the European Court of Human Rights, that Ibori had pleaded guilty to
criminal offences but subsequently applied for permission to appeal his
convictions in light of the disclosure of new material.
According to his counsel, it is this “new material” which surfaced later that Ibori is predicating this appeal on.
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Ibori’s
counsels said in the case filed at the EU Court of Human Rights that at
one of the court’s sittings, “Ms Sasha WASS QC (‘SWQC’), who had
previously been instructed to prosecute the applicant (Ibori), sent a
note to the Court of Appeal (‘the Wass Note’).
The counsels
argued that, “it was a highly unusual note because it provided
information, which could easily identify the source of the new material
on which the Applicant’s appeal was based. However, in a reverse twist,
such disclosure is prohibited in all court proceedings by Section 17 of
RIPA”.
In an effort to attempt to comply with Section 17 of RIPA
for the remainder of the hearing, the Court of Appeal imposed ‘Ground
Rules’ on the parties, which limited what the applicant’s counsel could
refer to in his submissions.
The applicant submitted to the Court
of Appeal – and submits in this application – that Section 17 of RIPA,
combined with the ‘Ground Rules’, prevented him from properly developing
his submissions before the Court of Appeal, adding that “as a result
his appeal hearing was unfair.”
This development, it was learnt, is the major plank on which Ibori’s case rests.
The
former governor appealed to the EU Court of Appeal because a London
Appeal Court had refused to interrogate this submission and actually
ruled that the issue of what is now known as “the Wass Note” was a no-go
area.
He alleged that Britain denied him his rights to fair trial – which is recognised everywhere in the free world.
His
appeal was based on the following issues: “That identified corrupt
British Police Officers were responsible for the conduct of the case
against him. That they deliberately withheld prosecution evidence, which
had it been disclosed at the correct time would have prevented any
guilty pleas being entered. That the prosecution failed to follow the
legally required RIPA procedure as stipulated in British Law.”
He
alleged that the Court of Appeal ruled against him and went further to
refuse him leave to bring an appeal on the case they had just determined
Source:- Thisdaylive
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