The Federal High Court in Abuja will on July 2 deliver judgment on the propriety or otherwise of the two and a half years long detention of the immediate-past National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd).
Dasuki, in the suit, asked the court to declare his detention by the Department of State Service since December 29, 2015 illegal and award in his favour the sum of N5bn as “general damages and compensation” for the alleged violation of his rights.
Arguing his client’s suit which was filed March 15, this year, Mr. Ahmed Raji (SAN), said there was no legal basis for keeping the ex-NSA in detention for over two years.
Joined in the suits as the respondent were the Director-General of the DSS, Mr. Lawal Daura, the DSS itself, and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr. Abubakar Malami, all of whom opposed the suit on Monday.
DSS operatives had on December 29, 2015, re-arrested and took Dasuki into custody shortly after he was released from Kuje Prison in Abuja on meeting the bail conditions imposed on him by the courts where is being currently prosecuted.
He had been granted bail by both the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory in Maitama, Abuja, where he is facing two separate sets of charges of diversion of funds earmarked for purchase of arms to fight insurgency in the North-East, and the Federal High Court in Abuja where he is being prosecuted on charges of illegal possession of firearms and money laundering.
He instituted the suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/263/2018, on March 15, 2018, following the Supreme Court’s judgment delivered on March 2, 2018, dismissing his case in which he had sought an order stopping his trials until he was released from “unlawful” detention.
Earlier before the Supreme Court’s judgment, he had obtained a favourable judgment of the Economic Community of West African States Court of Justice delivered on October 4, 2016, ordering his release from illegal custody but which the DSS had not obeyed.
Dasuki’s lawyer, Raji, told Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu on Monday that the continued detention of his client on the grounds that he would constitute a threat to national security if released, was not legally justifiable.
Raji said the allegations of diverting of funds meant for fighting insurgency and being in illegal possession of firearms were already the subjects of his client’s ongoing trials in which the the ex-NSA had been granted bail, thus could not be the basis for his continued detention.
