Buruji Kashamu: faces extradition to the United States

Senator Buruji Kashamu’s   efforts to stop his extradition to Chicago, United States to answer drug related charges has suffered another setback with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding an earlier ruling that that he could be repatriated to the United States for trial on the offence.

The Nigerian lawmaker was allegedly indicted in a heroin case alongside convicted money launderer turned “Orange Is the New Black” writer Piper Kerman in 1998, sued the Department of Justice in 2015.

Kashamu had in the suit tried to convince the appellate court to stop U.S. law enforcement from carrying out what he alleged was an imminent plan by U.S Drug Enforcement Administration to team up with his political rivals and “abduct” him in Nigeria.

U.S Drug Enforcement Administration agents teamed up with the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, to lay siege to Kashamu’s Lagos home for six days in a 2015 abduction attempt, before a court ordered them to leave.

But while rejecting Kashamu’s application, the U.S. Appellate Court Judge Richard Posner on Monday wrote that nothing in the law prevents U.S. agents from “being present when foreign officers are effecting an arrest or from assisting foreign officers who are effecting an arrest.”

Kashamu, who is the basis for the character Kubra Balik in the Netflix show, has always insisted that U.S. prosecutors confused him with his dead brother.

He previously frustrated attempts to extradite him from Britain.

A dozen people long ago pleaded guilty in the case including American Piper Kerman, whose memoir was adapted for the Netflix hit “Orange Is The New Black.” Kerman’s book never identified Kashamu by name, only citing a West African drug kingpin.

The senator faces up to 20 years in U.S prison.