Former Nigerian Minister of Transport in the second republic, Dr. Umaru Dikko
A former British custom officer, Mr. Charles Morrow
has explained how he foiled attempted kidnap of former Nigerian Minister
of Transport in the second republic, Dr. Umaru Dikko, who was parceled
in a crate, in London en route to Nigeria in 1984.
In a BBC Podcast Blueprint monitored
yesterday, Morrow said, “At the cargo terminal of Stansted Airport, 40
miles (64km) north of London, a Nigerian diplomat was anxiously waiting
for the crates to arrive. The day had gone fairly normal until about
3pm. Then we had the handling agents come through and say that there was
a cargo due to go on a Nigerian Airways 707, but the people delivering
it didn’t want it manifested.
I went downstairs to see who they were and what was
happening. I met a guy who turned out to be a Nigerian diplomat called
Mr Edet. He showed me his passport and he said it was diplomatic cargo.
Being ignorant of such matters, I asked him what it was, and he told me
it was just documents and things. A missing person’s bulletin alerted
customs officials to the kidnapping No one on duty at Stansted had dealt
with a diplomatic bag before, and Mr Morrow went to check the
procedure.
“Just then a colleague returned from the passenger
terminal with some startling news. There was an All Ports Bulletin from
Scotland Yard saying that a Nigerian had been kidnapped and it was
suspected he would be smuggled out of the country. The police had been
alerted by Mr Dikko’s secretary who had witnessed his abduction from a
window in the house. I just put two and two together. The classic
customs approach is not to look for the goods, you look for the space.
So I am looking out of the window and I can see the
space which is these two crates, clearly big enough to get a man inside.
We’ve got a Nigerian Airways 707, which we don’t normally see. They
don’t want the crates manifested, so there would be no record of them
having gone through. And there was very little other cargo going on
board the aircraft. If you want to hide a tree, you hide it in the
forest. You don’t stick it out in the middle of Essex.”
On how the crates were opened, he said “But any cargo
designated as a diplomatic bag is protected by the Vienna Convention
from being opened by customs officers “To qualify as a ‘diplomatic bag’
they clearly had to be marked with the words ‘Diplomatic Bag’ and they
had to be accompanied by an accredited courier with the appropriate
documentation.
After half an hour, police started to arrive, and
they opened the second crate. Inside they found an unconscious Mr Dikko,
and a very much awake Israeli anaesthetist. Mr Dikko was lying on his
back in the corner of the crate. He had no shirt on, he had a heart
monitor on him, and he had a tube in his throat to keep his airway open.
No shoes and socks and handcuffs around his ankles. The Israeli anesthetist was in there, clearly to keep him alive.”
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