Hands off Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s Matter. You Have No Jurisdiction. -Bruce Fein.

Hands off Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s Matter. You Have No Jurisdiction. -Bruce Fein.

Hands off Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s Matter. You Have No Jurisdiction. -Bruce Fein.

Bruce Fein, the United States counsel to the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has written to Justice James Omotosho of Nigeria’s Federal High Court in Abuja, demanding the dismissal of all charges against the IPOB leader on grounds of lack of jurisdiction.

In a letter dated October 28, 2025, and titled “Dismissal of prosecution of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu for lack of jurisdiction,” Fein argued that the Nigerian government should not benefit from what he described as its own “criminality” in the process that led to Kanu’s rendition to Nigeria.

“No government should profit from its own criminality. That has been binding law from time immemorial,” Fein wrote, invoking the principle that justice is the foundation of government and civil society.

Citing the 1928 opinion of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States, Fein emphasized that governments undermine the rule of law when they themselves break it.

“In a government of laws, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our Government is the potent, omnipresent teacher.

“For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

“To declare that, in the administration of the criminal law, the end justifies the means — to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution,” Fein quoted from Justice Brandeis’ ruling.

Fein argued that both the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and Nigerian courts have recognized that the Federal Government committed “multiple crimes” in bringing Kanu into Nigerian custody, including kidnapping, torture, and extraordinary