Biafran separatist leader charged with treason

Prosecutors in Nigeria charged a separatist leader with treason on Thursday, alleging that his fight for an independent homeland for one of the country’s biggest ethnic groups included forming a tribal army to “overhaul” the government. Ralph Uwazurike, who founded the southeastern secessionist Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), was brought before a federal court in the capital, Abuja, where four counts of treason and conspiracy were read to him and six other MASSOB members. “The accused persons have been calling for secession from the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” the court document said. The seven committed treason “by belonging to a militant group called MASSOB army, which is undergoing training with the intent to levy war against, intimidate and overhaul [President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government]”, the charge said. All pleaded not guilty and were ordered returned to custody by presiding judge Binta Murtala-Nyako, who adjourned the case until 6 December. The activists face the death penalty if convicted of treason. Uwazurike appeared unfazed by the charges, waving to a small group of supporters as he left the courtroom and crying, “Up Biafra! We will not negotiate.” In the courtroom Uwazurike alleged he had been chained to the floor and tortured by the state security police who arrested him two weeks ago. He asked to be transferred to prison custody along with his colleagues, but the judge declined the request. Uwazurike had been declared wanted in July over the alleged circulation of currency purported to be of the independent Republic of Biafra. Uwazurike claims that successive governments have oppressed and discriminated against Nigeria's Igbos, the dominant ethnic group in the southeast. MASSOB wants to recreate the short-lived Republic of Biafra over which a bloody civil war was fought in Nigeria from 1967 to 1970, with more than one million people dying mostly from starvation. Uwazurike’s campaigns have struck a chord among thousands of jobless Igbo youths who were born after the war but who have joined MASSOB's ranks. In the southeastern city of Onitsha, a MASSOB stronghold, police on Monday clashed with thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets to protest Uwazurike’s arrest. During the melee the private residence of Nigeria’s first president, Nnamdi Azikiwe, who died in 1996, was set ablaze. Police charged that MASSOB activists chased outnumbered policemen into the residential compound and during the clash set the house on fire. MASSOB in turn accused government agents of starting the fire to discredit the secessionist movement in the eyes of ethnic Igbos, who respect Azikiwe but also form MASSOB’s support base. Human rights groups charge that dozens of pro-Biafran activists have been killed over the last six years for campaigning on behalf of their cause, with hundreds in detention after being arrested at marches and rallies organised by MASSOB.