The Umaru Dikko Kidnap: Reports By The Talking Drums Team
Kidnappers demanded $5 million from Dikko
The kidnap story as told by the prosecution was that following the military overthrow of the Second Republic in which Alhaji Dikko was Transport Minister, unnamed an Nigerian, acting as a spokesman for a group of "patriotic Nigerians" contacted Mr Barak with a request to help them to bring Mr Dikko to trial for having embezzled millions of his country's money.According to Barak, a dealer in diamonds who was known to his colleagues as Dr Kamal, two methods were explored to take Mr Dikko to Lagos.
The first possibility involving an extradition application was discouraged on the grounds that Mr Dikko supposedly with so much money in accounts in Switzerland and USA could simply move from Britain to another country.
Hence they settled on the Adolf Eichmann method of kidnap, He consequently contacted an Israeli anaesthetist, named in court as Mr B, who had links with the Israeli intelligence. Mr 'B' in turn secured another anaesthetist, 44 year old Dr Lev Arie Shapiro to drug Alhaji Dikko and administer medical care while he was in the crate with him.
To give credence to his activities, 'Dr Kamal' set up a bogus company in Paris and invited applications from journalists to help him interview Nigeria's military rulers for a documentary on the country. This documentary required that they interview Mr Dikko who was the military regime's number one wanted fugitive.
A Ghanaian journalist in London, Mr Cameron Duodu was approached to set up a meeting with Mr Dikko but this did not succeed.
Meanwhile Abitbol a childhood friend of 'Dr Kamal' had been recruited by Dr Kamal to mount surveillance on the residence of Mr Dikko in Porchester Terrace, Bayswater, West London.
On July 5 last year as Abitbol carried out his surveillance work to alert his colleagues to the approach of a policeman or any suspicious characters, a yellow van was parked near the house. Unsuspectingly Mr Dikko emerged from his flat and was walking past the van when he was seized by three men and bundled into the back of the van.
Abitbol locked it and joined a fifth man who was the driver, in the front seat.
Inside the van Mr Dikko later told the police he was under the impression that a knife was held to his throat. He was gagged, handcuffed and chained while the smallest of his captors told him: "If you give us $5 million paid in Switzerland we will let you go." Later the man said again "our contract with the Nigerian government is that they will pay us $1 million in Switzerland and if you do this, we will let you go."
At this stage a radio contact was made with Mr Dikko by his Secretary who had witnessed his seizure. The radio telephone pager, together with money and jewellery were consequently removed from him by his abductors.
The van made its way to a rendevous at a car park at the Regents Park near London Zoo where he was transferred into another van in which Dr Shapiro was waiting with two wooden crates. Mr Dikko was put in one of them and given injections by Dr Shapiro who stayed in the crate with him.
After he had sealed it, Dr Kamal also went into another crate with Abitbol which was also sealed by Major Yusuf.
Mr Dikko did not regain consciousness for 24 hours when he was found later at Stansted airport where he was attached to an electro-cardiogram monitor. He also had a trachial tube in his mouth, a blood pressure cuff and meter on his arm and two intravenous drips attached to his body.
Mr Dikko was discovered in the crate due to the prompt initiative of the anti-terrorist squad and the determination of a Customs and Excise officer who had been alerted by a police message.
At the airport the kidnappers were met by several diplomats from the Nigerian High Commission and Major Yusuf, dressed in the uniform of Nigerian Airways. The crates were marked "to the Ministry of External Affairs, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Lagos.
Alexander Barak, he masterminded the plot.
Maj-Gen. Hannaniya
The Umaru Dikko Kidnap: Nigerian government was involved
Reports by the Talking Drums team
The involvement of the Federal Military government in the kidnap attempt on Alhaji Umaru Dikko was formally revealed when a Major in the Nigerian Intelligence services told his interrogators that his role was that of a liaison officer between the Nigerian government through the High Commission in London and the Israelis. "I did my duty to my country, I am loyal to my country and I rely on British justice to decide my fate," Major Mohammed Yusuf who was transferred from the military intelligence to the Federal External Affairs after the coup in 1983 told Scotland Yard officers after he had been arrested in connection with the kidnap exercise.This story was told at the Old Bailey last Tuesday when Major Yusuf and three Israelis pleaded guilty to kidnapping Alhaji Dikko and administering stupefying drugs to him.
Major Mohammed Yusuf, who was described in court by a defence character witness as a nonviolent person, had arrived in Britain in May 1984 to take part in a kidnap plot which was hatched in New York in February 1984 to kidnap Alhaji Dikko to Lagos.
Prior to that he had worked as a Major in the Nigerian armed forces since 1969. After the 31 December military coup he transferred to the External Affairs Ministry and was attached to the Political Division. His trip to London marked his first posting from the External Affairs Ministry. But in London he was told by the Nigerian High Commission to stay at his hotel and wait for instructions.
Meanwhile at the February meeting in New York, Mr Alexander Barak, a businessman who deals in diamonds and had construction contracts in Lagos, had met with a Nigerian friend to kidnap Alhaji Dikko.
Mr Barak consequently set up a base in Paris where Major Yusuf first met him, without being told his name. This meeting was organised by the Nigerian embassy staff in Paris.
Back in London Major Yusuf had a phone call in his hotel from the High Commission to carry a parcel to a man at the Bayswater station. When he got there he was recognised by the man who happened to be the one he met in Paris and was later identified as Barak. The man went with him to show Mr Dikko's residence nearby. Ten days later he was asked to take another parcel to Barak. On this second meeting he was showed some crates and back to the High Commission he was told "we are going to send Umaru Dikko home. This is the man you are going to work with" Major Yusuf has refused to name the officer who told him that.
Those crates were procured from a joinery firm in Clapham. Barak also hired two vans in a false name. Since his mission was to return Mr Dikko to Lagos alive, Barak recruited Dr Shapiro, a renowned Israeli anaesthetist to assist.
Dr Shapiro consented, believing that the Israeli secret service, Mossad, was involved and that the exercise was of benefit to his country which needed Nigerian oil and yet had since 1967 had no diplomatic relations with Nigeria.
He came to London in June and stayed for two weeks but had to return to Israel when for unstated reasons the plot could not be executed. The drugs and equipment that were purchased for the exercise therefore had to be deposited in an air conditioned room at the Nigerian High Commission. Dr Shapiro however returned to London in July and a day later Mr Dikko was kidnapped near his residence at Porchester Terrace.
Dr Shapiro said that Mr Dikko was to be sedated for only two hours after which, the Nigerian High Commission Staff assured, the crates would be on a waiting Nigerian airline plane at the airport.
However Major Yusuf who nailed the second crate at Regents Park and was to lead them to the airport was not properly dressed and had to go back to the Nigerian High Commission where he was given a uniform of the Nigerian airways to wear.
The crates were marked, "To the Ministry of External Affairs, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Lagos and were met by Major Yusuf, Mr Okan Edet, a courier from the High Commission.
When suspicious customs men demanded that the crates be opened, Mr Edet, produced labels marked diplomatic baggage, which at the insistence of the customs officials were showed to cover a suitcase and baggage and not the crates. Major Yusuf at this stage became vociferous and insisted that the crates should not be opened. After he had been warned that he would be arrested if he proved obstructive the crates were opened by the police.
Inside was Mr Dikko crouching at his feet and deeply unconscious. With him was Dr Shapiro. Also in the second crate was Alexander Barek and Abitbol.
Meanwhile a Nigerian Airways Boeing 707 which had landed on the previous day July 4 and was scheduled to return the same day was still waiting on the tarmac on July 5 under the pretext of waiting to load a 'special cargo'.
Staff at Servisair, the handling agents for Nigeria Airways, told newsmen that the plane had flown in empty from Lagos on Wednesday evening and was due to take off at 7pm on Thursday with a load of furniture, catering equipment and general cargo. "We were told to expect some further cargo that afternoon but we were not told what it was, nor would we normally expect to be," they said. The plane was later searched by the British and allowed to return to Lagos. The yellow van in which Mr Dikko was taken to Regents Park was also found abandoned on the M11 motorway.
Nigeria's initial reaction
The then Nigerian High Commissioner in London Maj-Gen Hannaniya vociferously protested at suggestions that the federal military government was involved in the kidnap plot.Formally, General Hannaniya issued the following denial, "impossible, my government does not get involved in things like that". He even declared that he was "unaware" of the presence at the Stanstead airport of any member of the Nigerian High Commission staff.
But at the request of the British government General Hannaniya was quickly recalled by his government to Lagos.
As a retaliatory measure the Nigerian military government also ordered a British Caledonian passenger plane with 22 on board on a flight to London to fly back to Lagos. They also requested the British government Halidu to recall its High Commissioner in Lagos. The Nigerian Federal radio took a tough attitude in the matter launching a bitter attack against Britain for having 'overreacted' on the Dikko affair. It accused the British Prime Minister Mrs Margaret Thatcher of "silent hostility" towards Nigeria and the Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe of "naked hypocrisy". The radio called for a reassessment of Anglo-Nigeria relations and said that Britain had given "refuge" to people who had looted Nigeria and allowed them to be using Britain to attack Nigeria. "Britain," the radio said, "will have to choose between the fugitives and the rest of Nigeria."
General Hannaniya has since been reposted to Addis Ababa as his country's ambassador to Ethiopia.
Interview with 'Newsnight" - "I shall return"
Dr Umaru Dikko gave his first major interview since the abortive kidnap attempt to BBC Television's 'Newsnight' programme on Tuesday, February 12. Below is the full transcript.Newsnight: What are your recollections of the abduction?
Dikko: Well, I remember the very violent way in which I was grabbed and hurled into a van and a huge fellow also hurled into it sitting on my head and the way in which they immediately put on me handcuffs and chains to my legs. It was a very violent situation.
Newsnight: In the court the Israeli doctor said he had gone to great lengths to take care of you physically. Are you saying that is not the case?
Dikko: Well, I don't know what he did as a doctor, but it was clear from what I subsequently learnt that the contract would not be honoured if I were delivered dead, it was me alive, not dead. So if he claimed he did everything to ensure that I did not die, maybe he was right. But as far as I know when he gave me those injections and so forth, I became unconscious, that's all.
Newsnight: What were your feelings when you eventually came to in the hospital?
Dikko: Well, when I woke up in the hospital as I understand, after 24 hours or so, I think it was the last memory that came back to me. The people that I was seeing around looked to me like the kidnappers and therefore I couldn't believe that I was in the hospital. And for that reason I was fighting everybody in the hospital. Even the drip that they gave me. I pulled it off because it was the kidnappers I was seeing in my eyes. It was much, much later that I was convinced that I was in the safe hands of nurses and sisters and so on.
CONCLUSIONS
Newsnight: Are you absolutely convinced that the Nigerian government itself was behind the kidnapping?Dikko: Well, from what came out in the courts you can draw up your own conclusions. But for my own part, there is one basic fact which convinces me to think that way. I think it was Barak, because I recognise his face from his photograph. He held a knife against my throat and said to me that they want to be paid 5 million dollars otherwise the knife would go through my throat. So I said I haven't got that money. It doesn't matter what anybody would say, I haven't got it. So he said, "alright, let me tell you. Our contract with the Nigerian government", this is what he said, "is that you will pay 1 billion dollars in Switzerland. If you do that then the 5 million dollars which I have asked you, you can keep". So I said I have neither 5 million nor 1 billion dollars. If it's money you're looking for then I'm afraid your knife can go through my throat.
Newsnight: What have you got to say about the charges of corruption and election rigging made against you?
Dikko: Nigeria as you know is a very big country. The population is over 90 million now. A vast country like that with five different political parties. I want you to tell me how one man can be said to intimidate 90 million people when that man has no army, no guns. If by intimidation they mean I was able to persuade people to vote for our party, I would say yes. But maybe they are using the wrong word.
Now they talk about bribery. Up till now who has come out and said that he has given me money as a bribe? Nobody. And for one year there was nothing they did not do, including intimidating people to say things against me. I mean, you can make any allegations. Now they say for instance that I have got a bank account in the United States or Switzerland. Since they know, I would be very grateful if they could let me know.
I look forward to going back to Nigeria and I'll go back tomorrow if there is freedom in Nigeria. I'll go back, I'm not running away because I've committed a crime. I'm running away from my country because I'm forced by circumstances. We were in government, elected only two months old and then were overthrown by force of arms. Under such conditions anything can happen.
As you appreciate, the first thing that was done was to get everybody rounded up and thrown into jail. Some of them have been there for over one year waiting to be told the crimes that they are supposed to have committed. So if I had been there obviously my fate was clear.
The fact that they are pressing so hard to get me is not because of the funny allegations that they are making, but because they see me as a threat to their political plans.
Newsnight: Wherever you go in the world, aren't you always going to be afraid that what happened last July would happen again?"
Dikko: Well, let me say this, that no condition is permanent. The persecution that I'm going through now cannot last forever and I believe a time will come when my people would tell those who are persecuting me that enough is enough.
Kidnappers jailed 46 years
The four kidnappers of Alhaji Umaru Dikko have been jailed a total of 46 years by an old Bailey judge after they had pleaded guilty to two charges of kidnapping Mr Dikko and administering stupefying drugs to him.Defence attorneys representing each of the four men submitted mitigations on behalf of their clients.
Alexander Barak's defence attorney submitted that his client accepts full responsibility for his actions and stated categorically that he does not regret those actions. He admitted being the chief architect, planner and ring-leader of the whole operation. The attorney also revealed that Barak has considerable "business dealings with a rich, powerful and influential Nigerian", and that it was this Nigerian that had told him everything about the activities of Umaru Dikko when he was minister in the government of ex-President Shehu Shagari. The information given to Barak by the Nigerian was that Dikko was the "greatest, biggest thief" in the world and that as minister, he was responsible for large-scale corruption which ran into billions and that he had a private jet, many houses and fleets of cars everywhere. The Nigerian businessman then told Barak that Nigeria wanted Dikko at all cost and wondered if he (Barak) would help organise the operation in return for financial and business gains for himself as well as a promise to work towards restoring diplomatic relations between Nigeria and Israel.
To extend credence to their claim that Dikko was guilty of corruption, Barak's attorney said that they had submitted as exhibit, a copy of some "Judicial proceedings" held in Lagos before the chief magistrate on the 12th December 1984. He said that these proceedings to be used as basis for future extradition proceedings of Dikko, contained charges of corruption against Dr Dikko. The charges were that on two different occasions, Dikko had received from two construction firms, the sums of £450,000 and £42 million as a favour for doing unspecified jobs for the two have evidence that as minister, money was always taken in bags to Dikko's house and handed over to his domestic servant. Barak also took full responsibility for involving his other two Israeli nationals.
Mitigating for Mohammed Yusufu, his attorney confirmed that Yusuf was at the time of the kidnap, a major in the Nigerian army serving the Nigerian government. He says Yusuf's 'crime' was that of "blind loyalty" and carrying out orders from his superiors and asked: "what would have been Yusuf's predicament if he had failed to carry out his superior's orders?" The superior here was Nigeria's High Commissioner in London at the time of the kidnap. In a plea for mercy, the attorney reiterated that "Yusuf is a soldier by profession, one who is used to carrying out orders. He had no part in the actual kidnap procedure. He was an innocent liaison officer." He then ended up with this epitaph from Yusuf himself: "I am a loyal subject of Nigeria doing my duty to my country. .. I had no intention of harming anybody..”
Alhaji A. Adamu Waziri, a Nigerian lawyer who claims 15 years experience at the Nigerian bar testified as a character witness for Yusuf. Saying he has known Yusuf ever since he was 5 years old, Waziri stressed that Yusuf was married with seven children apart from many brothers, sisters and uncles, and that Yusuf is the sole bread-winner of the entire family. He brought out instances of suffering that Yusuf's family have already experienced ever since Yusuf was arrested and detained. Asked by the judge if the Nigerian government would take responsibility of looking after Yusuf's family, Waziri said that the Nigerian government has no provision for such mercies.
In giving sentence, the Judge stressed that because the case was an unusual case, he was going to make an explanation of the role of each of the accused in the kidnap plot. As for Alexander Barak, the Judge stated that he had no doubt that Barak led and planned the kidnap operation and gave credit to Barak for accepting full responsibility and pleading guilty.
He also said that he was prepared to accept that Barak's prime motive for the kidnap was in his country's interest and that because of that he is convinced Barak would have made sure Dikko arrived in Nigeria alive. In the case of Felix Messoud Abitbol, Mr Justice McCowan, the Judge, said he is of the opinion that Barak dragged him into the case but queries that Abitbol must be plainly naive to have allowed himself to reconcile his conscience for good business in Nigeria promised him by Barak if he joined the operation, Justice McCowan also said that he has taken into account the evidence that Abitbol has no military or security organisation links.
For Dr Shapiro, the Judge said that he has every reason to believe that his involvement was to help in the establishment of diplomatic relations between Nigeria and Israel, "having genuinely assumed that the Israeli Secret Service was behind the kidnap plot."
As for Yusuf Mohammed, the Judge said that Yusuf was indeed a major in the intelligence core of the Nigerian army and stressed that his role as a liaison officer in the whole plot was a very important one since at the time of the kidnap he was still in the employment of the Nigerian government.
As for the suffering of his children in Nigeria, Judge McCowan offered that since rich Nigerians back in Lagos financed the operation, those rich Nigerians should also be able to take care of Yusuf's family.
After litigating that kidnapping is a very serious offence, Judge McCowan stressed that he is not aware of any crimes committed by Umaru Dikko in Nigeria and held that since the culprits claimed they know of Dikko's crimes, their plot was not "an act of indiscriminate terrorism". Recognising too that all have pleaded guilty, Judge McCowan said that he was prepared to judge the case on the basis of no weapon used.
Behind the kidnap
Reports from the Talking Drums team
Right up to the last moment, Major Mohammed Yusufu tried to avoid his day in court. The reason for his reluctance became clear when the trial opened.Observers had been baffled by the fact that, in spite of having strenuously denied any complicity in the kidnap attempt, the Federal Military Government of Nigeria had been very nervous about the outcome of the trial. Maj-Gen. Buhari has said on many occasions since the July 4 botched attempt that relations between his country and Britain would depend on the outcome of the trial. The Foreign Minister had echoed the same sentiments.
When the trial started, it was something of an anti-climax, for all four accused persons pleaded guilty.
All along, the police sources had indicated that the three Israelis intended to plead guilty, accept responsibility and thus limit as much as possible the airing of the details of the plot. That they all appeared to have links with MOSSAD, the Israeli Secret Service, was enough to convince the interrogators that they were not likely to give away much.
Major Yusufu was another kettle of fish altogether; once the daring plot came unstuck at Stanstead airport and he was arrested, and once it looked like the police were ready to call his bluff on his claims for diplomatic immunity, he became a mine of information for the interrogators. As a police source put it: "He sang like a nightingale."
It was quite clear from the first appearance of the four before magistrates at the committal hearings last July, that Major Yusufu felt abandoned, a far cry from the exuberant and jocular Israelis who were represented in court by counsel. It was a very nervous Yusufu that appeared in court, ready to ask for British legal aid and the fact that he alone among the Nigerians rounded up at Stanstead had been kept, must have made him feel like his bosses had decided to make him the fall guy to take all the blame. Gone was the confident and vociferous army Major masquerading as a Nigeria Airways pilot at the airport who challenged custom officers and would not let them open the crates that contained Dikko. Gone was the James Bond posture who had completed his assignment and was heading home to a well-deserved hero's welcome. The deflation was instant and he sang and sang.
He had entered the country on a diplomatic passport, he told his interrogators about his role as 'liason officer' between the Nigerian High Commission in London and the Israelis. Details like the £500 he took from the High Commission to pay for the crates and the fact that he and others from the High Commission had been to the joinery firm that constructed the crates and that they were delivered to Inverness Terrace, the Welfare section of the High Commission which must have drawn its own graveyard jokes from the conspirators - 'the welfare crate for Umaru Dikko'.
Details like the £2,000 worth of drugs that had to be kept in an air conditioned room in the High Commission when the first plan for the snatch in May failed to work - no wonder Maj-Gen Halidu Hannaniya would not allow, could not allow the police to interview other people from the High Commission. Obviously Maj- Gen Buhari did not want it known that the Nigerian High Commission in London, on occasion, serves as changing room for Nigerian Airways officials.
When Major Yusufu had got over his initial shock and finally got access to a 'familiar face' through Nigerian solicitors, he tried to recoup some of his lost bluster, but he had spilled the beans already and his only way out would have been to avoid the day in court altogether by being granted diplomatic immunity. When that failed, on the Friday before the trial was due to start on Monday, he opted for "damage containment" and joined the Israelis in pleading guilty.
The feeling persists that those who financed the elaborate kidnap plot included people Dikko had antagonized politically and who were waging their own vendettas
As it turned out, the High Commission in London which must have braced itself for another burst of bad publicity must have been thankful that things did not turn out any worse.
The non-trial, as it were, which would have made the headlines on any other day, was, luckily for the Nigerians, beaten into the shadows by the sensational Ponting acquittal verdict. For the British, the Ponting trial occupied centre stage as it involved a prosecution under the controversial Official Secrets Act and the sinking of the Argentinian ship the Belgrano during the Falklands war in 1982. The top civil servant Clive Ponting was on trial for leaking information to a member of Parliament and his sensational acquittal with the subsequent political upheaval pushed everything else into second place. The kidnap case followed the Ponting case immediately, and when it was called, the court had not even settled down after the shock acquittal. The result was that the Dikko kidnap case did not attract the attention it would have attracted otherwise.
But now that the worst is over from the perspective of the Nigerian authorities, they would be hoping that they can now go on the offensive when the next stage of the bizarre drama is enacted. This is expected to be the extradition proceedings later on in the year, the Nigerian authorities having finally asked for the extradition of Dikko last month. The counsel for the Israelis had sought to offer the details of the Nigerian case for extradition as evidence for their allegations that Dikko was corrupt, but it was found that the document for the supposed judicial enquiry was dated December 12, 1984, some six months after the kidnap.
The thinking among legal circles is that the extradition request is bound to look like an afterthought, hurriedly brought up after the kidnap had failed. Some people might wonder that if indeed the Nigerians had evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Dikko why they found the kidnap route a more attractive one.
Even the most charitable onlooker could not help but notice some strange echoes - Gen. Hannaniya, the then High Commissioner, telling journalists coming out of the Foreign Office the morning after the kidnap attempt that it had been the work of "patriotic friends of Nigeria". Alexander Barak's story to the police after his arrest was that "Nigerian patriots" were behind the plot. The identities of these 'patriots' be they Nigerians or friends of Nigeria have not been. disclosed.
The feeling persists that the 'patriots' or patriotic friends who financed the elaborate kidnap plot included people whom Dikko had antagonized politically and who were waging their own vendettas against the once very powerful Minister.
The Kidnappers
Major Mohammed Yusufu, (actual name is Ahmadu Ja) aged 40 had 12 years. He described himself as the liaison officer for the Nigerian government in the kidnap operation. He joined the Nigerian public service in 1966. Three years later he enlisted in the Nigerian army. He was a major in the Intelligence unit of the security forces until the 1983 military coup when he transferred to the External Affairs Ministry in Lagos.In May 1984, he went on his first posting to London and his special duty was to liaise to execute Mr Dikko's kidnap.
He was arrested at Stanstead airport wearing a Nigerian Airways uniform which had been provided by the Nigerian High Commission in London. He is married and has seven children, three of whom are in secondary schools, three in primary and two in the nursery. Alexander Barak, aged 27 had 14 years in jail. He was a former Israeli Intelligence officer with existing links in Israeli intelligence. At the time of the kidnap, he operated from New York and London as an International diamond dealer. He also had business interests in Nigeria. He accepted responsibility as the architect and organiser of the kidnap exercise. He is also known to those he recruited to assist him as Dr Kamal.
Dr Lev Shapiro, aged 43 had 10 years. An Israeli anaesthetist consultant, he was born in Russia and emigrated to Israel. When he was recruited by Barak, Dr Shapiro said he had a genuine belief that the Israeli Intelligence agency had a role to play. He undertook the task of injecting Mr Dikko to sedate him and facilitate the kidnap exercise. He was discovered in the same crate with Mr Dikko. The judge said he sympathised with his motives because he believed genuinely he was helping his country.
Mr Felix Abitbol a shopkeeper, aged 31 had 10 years and was born in Tunisia but an Israeli from Natayna, which is also the home town of Barak. He has known Barak from childhood and was recruited by him to keep surveillance on the residence of Mr Dikko. On the day of the kidnap he monitored the movements of passers by who might interfere with the kidnap operation. After Mr Dikko had been grabbed and pushed into the van it was Abitbol's duty to lock the van from behind. He was discovered in the second crate with Barak. He had hoped for "good business" from Nigeria as his reward.
