Spain: Nigerian man dies during forced expulsion
01 July 2007
A 23-year-old Nigerian man, Osamuyia Aikpitanhi, died in mid-flight on 9 June 2007 from cardio-respiratory failure caused by asphyxia during a deportation on an
Iberia flight from Madrid's Barajas airport to Lagos, according to medical reports. Aikpitanhi had refused to embark on the flight and was restrained by officers who struggled with him before carrying him onto the aircraft. His hands and feet were tied and he was gagged with tape because he had bitten an officer, according to police sources. The autopsy also recorded slight injuries to his back and left hand. It was the third attempt to carry out an expulsion that was orderd on 2 May 2007 and had been suspended twice before due to Aikpithani's resistance.
An early claim by police that it was a sudden death was contradicted by relatives. They said that the police "mistreated him and placed tape in his mouth to stop him shouting" and "sent four strong policemen to beat and mistreat him to be able to take him away". Chester Aikpithani, Osamuyia's brother, claimed that the coroner told him that his lungs were full of blood, and their lawyer is looking to bring a private prosecution. He has asked the competent court in Elche (Alicante), close to where the Iberia aircraft landed, to open investigations into allegations of ill?treatment and of causing Aikpithani's death against the officers executing the expulsion. They claimed that witnesses confirm their claims. A video recording by one of the passengers was also reported to exist. The judge has taken statements from two Nigerian witnesses who were also set to be deported on the flight. However, the two officers escorting Aikpitanhi were heard as witnesses in the Madrid provincial court, rather than as suspects, as the prosecution had requested.
Aikpitanhi's death confirms the deadly effects of expulsion policy and practices. He joins a list of deaths of third?country migrants deported in flights out of the EU, including a number of cases in which covering deportees' mouths and obstructing their breathing led to their deaths by asphyxia, as occurred in the case of Khaled Abuzarifeh, a Palestinian being expelled from Switzerland to Egypt in March 1999, of Marcus Omofuma, a Nigerian man on a flight from Austria to Sofia in May 1999, and of Aamir Mohamed Ageeb, a Sudanese asylum seeker on a flight from Germany to Cairo on which he was forced to embark wearing a helmet. Council of Europe guidelines concerning deportation flights recommend that "the ability of the repatriated person to breathe normally must not be impeded or put at risk".
In late May 2006, President Abdullah Wade of Senegal temporarily suspended the country's agreement to receive people expelled from Spain in protest after a group of nearly 100 of his fellow countrymen had been expelled in flights, handcuffed and without knowing where they were going, in conditions that he claimed contravened human rights. An earlier and more alarming incident involved the expulsion of scores of Nigerians who were sedated on a flight to Lagos in 1999.
The Federation of Spanish SOS Racismo associations issued a statement calling for a transparent and effective investigation into the causes of Osamuyia Aikpitanhi's death, for its findings to be made public, and for adequate measures to be adopted if any responsibility for the death was ascertained. They also called on the ombudsman to investigate the case and noted that there have been precedents for bad practices while carrying out expulsions. A spokesperson for the Federation of Nigerian Communities was quoted as claiming that the "police treated him like an animal", and called for the "officers to be tried and have the law applied to them". The spokesperson added that ill-treatment of deportees on airplanes by officers is frequent.
El Pais newspaper also reported that an investigating commission composed of Nigerian MPs will investigate the circumstances surrounding the death and has called<