Controversial Canada-based lawyer Miguna Miguna has sued the Kenya Airports Authority and international airline Emirates for torture and illegal detention.
In a 10-page affidavit to the High Court he seeks damages and wants the two punished for unlawful detention. Through lawyer John Khaminwa, Miguna says KAA and the airline should also be punished for unlawful search, seizure, sedation, torture and assault.
He accuses them of colluding to have him forcibly removed from Kenya. They violated his constitutional and fundamental rights, including privacy.
Miguna says KAA knew he had obtained court orders requiring him to be released and not removed from the jurisdiction of the court, but still went ahead to facilitate the illegalities.
KAA and the Emirates should be punished for libel, slander and defamation of character, compensatory damages, exemplary or punitive damages and must thus foot the cost of the suit, Miguna says.
“KAA employees worked with heavily armed men and women wearing civilian and police uniforms to physically assault, batter, brutalise and humiliate the plaintiff in full public view, tore his clothes, violated his personal integrity and violently attempted to force him to board an Emirates flight to Dubai,” the affidavit reads.
He demands a declaration that he is “entailed to an unequivocal and fulsome retraction of the defamatory words and a written and an unqualified apology approved by him prominently published on the front pages in four of the widely circulating national newspapers in Kenya in both their hard copy and electronic or digital versions for a period of seven days.”
Also sought is an order restraining “the defendants from further uttering, repeating or publishing or causing to be published the words referred to.”