FRIGHTEN THE ACTIVIST OR PIN A CRIME ON HIM?

Sunny Ofehe

BY JOE OGBODU, JUST BACK FROM THE NETHERLANDS

For 16 years, Sunny Ofehe, a Dutch-Nigerian environmental activist, had lived happily with his family in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The peace in his household was, however, shattered recently when an allegation of conspiracy to blow up oil pipeline belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria was levelled against him.

Ofehe told the Nigerian Compass on Saturday that he had never had any problem with the Dutch government’s law enforcement agencies since migrating there 16 years ago.

It was there that he met his wife, Dorothy, a Nigerian with whom he has four “great boys.”

But Ofehe’s kids were traumatized late last year when they experienced what they had never seen in such a pristine environment: The ransacking of their home by the Dutch police.

The police said they had been investigating him for an alleged act of terrorism, in particular, conspiracy to blow up an oil pipeline belonging to Shell in Ekpoma, Nigeria.

Ofehe’s lawyer, Ed Mander, says he has the “feeling”- but no evidence- that the Dutch authorities are out to do the Nigerian in.

This, in his view, would help explain why Ofehe was under police investigation for 18 months during which his telephone conversations were regularly tapped.

The Nigerian activist said that over 25 police officers were mobilised for the investigation, resulting in a 7,500-page dossier on him.

His words: “They broke into my car and wired it with listening and tracking device.  They placed a vehicle with surveillance camera in front of my office for five weeks.  My case file is 7,500 pages; the investigative tactics alone takes 2,500 pages.”

Ofehe had said that the security forces were “determined to crush” him for his constant criticism of multinational oil companies and the misappropriation of oil revenues generated from the Niger Delta by the Nigerian government.

“They were desperate to get a crime pinned on me”, he said.

Ofehe left the shores of Nigeria in 1995 to seek political asylum in The Netherlands. Prior to this, his mother was killed in Nigeria in October, 2007. He has been in the vanguard of the crusade against environmental injustice in the oil rich but strife-torn Niger Delta.

Ofehe had used an organization he founded in 2005, Hope for Niger Delta Campaign (HNDC), to push for non-violence  campaign in the Niger Delta region. He used the organisation to draw attention to the despoliation of the environment by oil companies operating therein.

His campaign for justice, peace and development in the Delta had taken him to several international conferences around Europe. More, in particular, was his campaign to the European Union (EU) where he had given testimonies of the situation in the Delta.

Ofehe had raised awareness by filming oil spills, as well as documenting acts of sabotage to pipelines by oil thieves in the Niger Delta.

He was said to have preached non-violent struggle with suspected members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) when he visited their camp for a documentary.

Ofehe and Dutch cameraman from the creeks of Niger Delta

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But the Dutch police prosecutor claimed that Ofehe conspired to sabotage oil pipeline in the Niger Delta region to film and document them with intent to foster his campaign.

Ofehe, in a telephone conversation with the Nigerian Compass on Saturday, said that the Dutch police prosecutor had based his new charges on tapped phone conversations in which he made the arrangements with a friend in Nigeria to film a documentary in the Niger Delta for a prominent Dutch media organisation.

He told the Nigerian Compass on Saturday that the allegation was laughable, saying: “There is no way my campaign can be effective without showing the people what is happening there.

I believe seeing is believing. In no manner could my intention have been to blow up oil pipelines just to film them”.

Ofehe’s report attracted the international community, particularly the European countries that host the oil companies operating in the Niger Delta.

Rather than receive a pat on the back for exposing the grave inhuman acts going on in the Niger Delta, Ofehe was arrested and slammed with terrorism charges.

If convicted, he may be sentenced to a jail term of about 10 years or deportation, since the Dutch government considers his activities as a threat to national security.

Currently, the story of Ofehe’s peaceful sojourn in The Netherlands is drawing media attention ostensibly because the offence for which he is already being prosecuted is only at the investigation stage.

More so, his trial is holding in The Netherlands and not his home country, Nigeria, where the alleged sabotage was supposed to take place.

The Federal Government of Nigeria was only recently informed of the offence when activist lawyer, Festus Keyamo petitioned President Goodluck Jonathan and copied the National Assembly, seeking a probe of the charges against Ofehe in far-away Netherlands.

Ofehe in a handshake with then Vice President Jonathan

However, tongues are already wagging that there is a “higher force” behind Ofehe’s travail. But Ofehe’s team of defence are set to unmask those allegedly behind the new charges of terrorism with their submission when the court resumes on December 5.

It is certainly not clear yet why a Nigerian is being charged with such a serious crime outside Nigeria where the alleged offence purportedly took place.

The Netherlands is noted for justice, considering the number of international judicial organizations located there.

Ofehe’s counsel told a team of Nigerian journalists  that he also could not fathom why the trial was taking place in The Netherlands. He merely said: “There might be different possibilities, but I wish we knew the answer. However, we don’t have to forget that Shell has enormous interest here.”

It is being alleged that the Royal-Dutch, Shell Oil Company which operates in the Niger Delta has a hand in the Ofehe’s travail going by the timeliness of the arrest and his detention few months after he testified against the oil company at the Dutch parliamentary hearing on the activities of Shell at The Hague on January 26.

Shell was for the first time summoned by the Dutch parliament to give account of its activities in the Niger Delta, more so after the visit of the Member of Parliament, Sharon Gesthuizen to the creek communities of the Niger Delta.

The visit by Sharon was reportedly facilitated by Ofehe who also gave testimonies at the hearing.

Following these scenarios, it is widely suspected that there is conspiracy between Shell and the Dutch government to “clip Ofehe’s wings”.

Keyamo alluded to this when he said that Ofehe “had a strong conviction that some powerful forces, both in the Netherlands and Nigeria, are actively involved in his present ordeal with the Dutch authorities.”

The activist lawyer buttressed his views with Ofehe’s suspicion which, according to him, follows the inability of the Dutch authorities to sustain the charge of human trafficking earlier slammed on him. Suddenly, the authorities brought a new charge of “conspiracy to commit terrorist act by blowing pipelines belonging to Shell in Nigeria”.

Ofehe was initially charged with “human trafficking, fraud and providing false information to assist a political asylum seeker.”

But the charges were dropped for alleged act of terrorism. His arrest and subsequent detention came on the heels of his public testimony against Shell and its exploration activities in the Niger Delta, Kayemo said in a petition to President Jonathan.

“Ofehe was planning to return to Nigeria to participate in the funeral rites of his mother who was assassinated sometime in October, 2007 by yet-to-be- apprehended assassins,” the lawyer said, adding that with the new charges of terrorism, Ofehe stands as the “first offender to be prosecuted under this law in the entire Netherlands”.

But Ofehe’s lawyer in the Netherlands, Ed Mander and Penning do not want to agree to the claim that “there are some powerful forces behind Ofehe’s travail.”

Penning and Ed Mander

The prosecutor had refused the Ofehe defence team the case file, codenamed “Tokyo.”

But the team believes the file would enable them know all the offences against Ofehe and how they could prepare their defence.

Ed Mander said that it was hard to answer if the case against Ofehe was a persecution orchestrated by some powerful forces in the Netherlands and in Nigeria because “we do not have any proof”.

He said: “We do have reasonable doubts about what forces are behind Sunny’s prosecution. But it is difficult to point them out, especially as we do not have all the files against him. It is equally strange that the prosecution here in Holland is concerned about something that would have taken place in Nigeria, based on a minimum of three pages of wiretaps on suspicion of terrorism. In my opinion, you cannot do that. When you have such a serious allegation, there should be a file that would be huge. Those circumstances are very suspicious. So we suspect that there is something going on but it is still very hard to pinpoint at this time”.

The Royal Dutch oil company, Shell, had operated in the Niger Delta for years and little of their operation in the poverty-stricken region was known to the Dutch people. Ofehe’s campaign for justice, peace and development in the Delta however attracted many a Dutch people. His counsel, Ed Manders, attested to this when he said that they became interested in what happened in Nigeria, particularly the atrocities being committed in the Niger Delta by the oil companies, when they find out that Ofehe was genuine about his campaign.

“When Sunny (Ofehe) came here, we became very interested about what happened in Nigeria. For example, I have seen papers showing that about nine years ago, Shell bought weapons for the military to defend their installations. Large numbers of people were killed but Shell said, ‘we are not concerned with it; we did not fire the weapons.’ But you bought the weapons and gave them to someone else to fire. We are not saying Shell is responsible for Sunny’s case, but it might also be Shell”.

Ofehe has been with the Dutch people and all these years they never saw him as “ a terrorist”?

To that question, Mander said: “We have never had a case like this and we think it cannot be proved”.

Why, then, level such an allegation? His response: “There was a big article in the media here by an expert in terrorism and she said, ‘I can imagine there can be a political aspect (to the case). It is strange that there are no links with The Netherlands for terrorism in Nigeria.”

He also noted that with such accusation in the Netherlands, Ofehe would have problems with his immigration status.

Mander quoted an expert in terrorism, Quirine Eijkman, and said: “Her comments were very positive because that was what we always thought. But we are humans and we think how it can happen.

However, as a lawyer, in court we have to prove things. In the case of Sunny, now his status has problems. If you make such allegations against someone and it is in the media worldwide, if he leaves this country no other European country will take him. In the end, if he has to go back to Nigeria, I don’t think he will be welcome over there too”.

This shows how grave the allegations against Ofehe are. On the implications of the allegations, Mander said: “Terrorism attracts life imprisonment. But it will never happen in this case. It looks like a very big case but it isn’t”.

In the recorded wiretape, Ofehe was said to have had a telephone conversation with someone in Nigeria, in which he allegedly said: “I want to film the bunkering (of oil) in Nigeria and expose it to the world.”

The lawyer said that three wiretapes of the conversation were in the file of the Dutch security agencies for two years, adding: “If you really think someone is a terrorist, you arrest him at once”.

Another of Ofehe’s lawyers, Michiel Pennings lamented: “Sunny was not detained for two weeks based on this terrorist act. He was set free for months and suddenly they put this on the subpoena (in August). It is strange”.

They both believe that Ofehe’s chances in the case are very good. Waxing sarcastic, Pennings said: “They have tried everything and put in so much work. About 25 detectives were working on his case. We have 7000 pages of file so far, apart from the files we don’t have yet. They put in a lot of work but came up with not so much”.

On what played out in court when the case began on September 5 before the judge adjourned the matter to December 5, Mander said: “We had a special request that the prosecutor ought to make the case file on Sunny named ‘Tokyo,’ available to us otherwise we would not have a fair trial. But they refused to give us the file. The second thing we said was that if you have an allegation of terrorism against someone, everyone now knows he is a Nigerian and a court case like this might destroy his person.”

It was not clear who is stalling the trial between the Dutch government and the judiciary, as Mander said that there is difference between the two.

His words: “It is not the government. Instead, it is either the persecutor is very stupid or there is something else behind it. From the legal point of view, the file is the start of the investigation against someone. But from the start of the investigation, they have used all kinds of special tactics such as tapping, following, among others.”

Pennings cut in, saying: “The basis for the special investigation tactics all came from the file that we do not have. In order to have a special investigation tactics, there needs to be a suspicion. They derived the suspicion against Sunny from the file that we do not have. We need that file in order to see what is going on. That is a right that we have, based on the human rights that are here in Europe.”

So what happens if the prosecutor doesn’t make the file available to the defence team before the next sitting of the court?   Pennings said: “We will ask the court for it and we think the court will give it to us. They have to. If in the end we do not get it, we would ask that the prosecution should not be admitted to propose the case in court. But I cannot imagine that happening, otherwise we would file an appeal and seek our rights before a higher court here”.

The spokesman of the Public Prosecutor handling Ofehe’s case, Wim de Bruin, confirmed that the Nigeria government was not investigating Ofehe on the terrorism charge. He said that neither the Dutch nor the Nigerian police were involved in investigations in Nigeria, pointing out that this was “not necessary as this is an exclusively Dutch investigation.

”Ofehe, who confirmed this in a telephone conversation with the Nigerian Compass on Saturday, said that the public prosecutor, Gert Veurink, had agreed to some of the requests submitted to the court by his lawyers at the opening of the trial.

He said that his lawyers would be allowed to listen to tapped phone calls which the public prosecutor claimed were between him and a contact in Nigeria with whom he was alleged to have plotted terrorist attacks on oil pipelines.

Ofehe noted that the prosecutor had rejected the defence request to call 15 people to the witness stand – most of them members of the Dutch security services, on the grounds that insufficient arguments were made.

He said that in a letter to his lawyers in the Netherlands, the prosecutor, Veurink agreed with the appearance of three people – two of them Nigerians – on the witness stand.

“He also dismissed our demand to call an expert to describe the situation in the Niger Delta, saying the judge would determine who would be called to the witness stand when the trial resumes.”

Ofehe added however that the prosecutor had also agreed to grant his lawyers access to files codenamed ‘Tokio’.

In making further inquiries to why Netherlands seemed to be ‘crying more than the bereaved’, Quirine Eijkman, a senior researcher at the Centre for Counter-terrorism at Leiden University in the Netherlands, agrees that it is not absolutely necessary to conduct further investigations in Nigeria.

She said: “Ofehe is charged with conspiracy on the basis of tapped phone calls in the Netherlands. So, I don’t think it’s necessary to go to Nigeria.

”To Eijkman, the prosecutor should have done more research into the political situation in the Niger Delta.  “This would have helped explain why Ofehe is involved in human rights advocacy and why he wanted to film the illegal oil tapping in the Niger Delta.”

She finds it “remarkable” that Dutch authorities charge someone with plotting to blow up pipelines in Nigeria at a time the Nigerian authorities are granting amnesty to militants involved in sabotage.

Eijkman said that the Dutch authorities ought to “show restraint” when charging people in the Netherlands with conspiracy to commit terrorist crimes abroad, “especially in places with socio-political tensions like the Niger Delta.”

Another reason to show restraint, she said, is the fact that “terrorist charges carry a social stigma” and that “human rights activists need freedom and social space to conduct their advocacy work”.

In all, Ofehe who says he aims to raise more global awareness to the extensive environmental pollution caused by the oil companies in the Niger Delta, declared that his travail in the Netherlands notwithstanding, he would not lose faith in that country’s judicial system or the country itself.

He said: “I believe in the judiciary of this country and I know that at the end of the day I will be exonerated. The people of this country have shown me and my family love and I know they love me. I have stayed in this country for 16 years and I have no other place.”

So far, the Federal Government is trying to probe into the travail of Ofehe, with the House of Representative causing its Committee on Public Petition to probe the matter.

Ofehe’s constituent rpresentative, Hon Leo Okuweh Ogor brought the petition by Keyamo before the House. The Chief of Staff to the Speaker, Sada Soli Jibia, acknowledged Keyamo’s petition prior to the presentation by Ogor.

Ogor asserted that Ofehe was being ‘persecuted’ for the struggle to bring the attention of the international community to the plight of the Niger Delta people.

The House Speaker, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal consequently referred the petition to the committee  for further investigation. He also urged the committee to investigate the genuineness of Ofehe campaign in the Netherlands.

The Presidential Adviser on Niger Delta and chairman of the Amnesty Programme, Hon Kingsley Kuku had earlier expressed concern about the travail of Ofehe saying that the activist was being “persecuted” because he was challenging Shell for environmental degradation at the headquarters of Shell in The Hague, Netherlands.

Nonetheless, he advises Ofehe to trudge on despite the travail, saying: “They are after you because you are saying the truth. You are saying that your environment is destroyed. You are saying that they have destroyed your community and that they have taken so much of your oil and your money, they are developing their country and destroying your own”.

Kuku, who has been on a global search for the training of the 26,358 “ex-militants” who laid down their arms in the Federal Government’s amnesty programme, pointed accusing fingers at Shell at the famous French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) in Paris, France.

He affirmed the allegation by Ofehe and his counsel that “there is a higher force behind his travail”. However, back home and even in the Netherlands, Ofehe’s trial have been on the spur-of-the-moment.

Former National President of the Ijaw Youth Council, (IYC), and key facilitator of the Federal Government Amnesty Programme, Dr. Chris Ekiyor, dismissed the alleged charges against Ofehe as trumped up.

He said: “It is quite surprising to hear that Sunny is being charged with terrorism in Nigeria by the Dutch government, whereas the Nigeria government is quiet.” Ekiyor, who recently attended a Post-Amnesty Conference organized by Ofehe in Rotterdam, said: “This goes to show the politics of oil can make great nations desperate.”

He added: “I am convinced Sunny will find justice in the end. He worked tirelessly to bring hope in the Niger-Delta by supporting the peace initiative we preached. So, when and where did he blow up oil installations?”

ALSO READ: SUNNY OFEHE: WHAT NEXT AFTER FAILED TERRORISM CHARGE?

The former IYC president, who mid-wived the success of amnesty programme, noted that at a time, each of the militant camps in the Niger Delta had the capacity of overrunning a state.

“My candid advice therefore is for the Dutch government to drop the charges and support the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, position on Ogoni, vis a vis Niger-Delta,” Ekiyor added.

Few weeks ago, in solidarity with the Nigerian standing trial, former Field Commander of the outlawed MEND, Ben Ebikabowei (aka Boyloaf) visited Ofehe in The Netherlands. Boyloaf told our correspondent on phone after he returned from the trip that he was in The Netherlands to show concern about the trial, disclosing that Ofehe was one of the persons who made him accept the Federal Government’s amnesty programme. Boyloaf commended the activist for his effort at bringing the Niger Delta crisis to the international community.

Boyloaf with Ofehe’s family

Ogbodu and Ofehe

This article was originally published by the Nigerian Compass and reproduced by SaharaReporters on November 05, 2011 shortly after seasoned journalist, Joe Ogbodu returned from The Netherlands