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Ex-Gov Ibori drags UK to European Court of Human Rights to challenge conviction

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Ibori loses UK appeal, heads for European court

A former governor of Delta State, James Ibori, has challenged his conviction for corruption by the United Kingdom.

Uncomfortable with his conviction, Ibori dragged the UK government to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, praying the court to quash the decision of the court in London.

Attestation papers showed that the suit was instituted on April 16, 2019. He contended in the appeal filed by his counsel that Britain disobeyed its own laws in a rush to get him convicted.

“This application concerns an unusual provision of United Kingdom law: s17 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, RIPA.

“It prohibits any reference, in any proceedings, to an intercepted communication or its contents like 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,” his counsel said.

He claimed that the operation of s17 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.

The council went further to say that Britain’s failure to obey its own laws has rendered every other thing that followed, including Ibori’s guilty plea later, defective.

He added that Ibori pleaded guilty to criminal offences but subsequently applied for permission to appeal his convictions in light of the disclosure of new material.

“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 s17 of RIPA.

“In response to the Wass Note, and in an effort to attempt to comply with s17 of RIPA for the remainder of the hearing, the Court of Appeal imposed ‘Ground Rules’ on the parties. This 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 s17 of RIPA, combined with the ‘Ground Rules’, prevented him from properly developing his submissions before the Court of Appeal. As a result, his appeal hearing was unfair.

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“The above is the crux of the matter. It is the major plank on which Ibori’s case rests. Ibori appealed to the EU Court of Appeal because a London Appeal Court 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. This made Ibori appeal to the European Court of Human Rights because Britain denied him his rights to a fair trial which is recognised everywhere in the free world,” Ibori counsel said.

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