Expdonaloaded News; House arrest: Dasuki heads to court

FORMER National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd), may head to court this morn­ing to challenge the siege on his Asokoro, Abuja residence by the Department of State Services (DSS) since last Thursday.

Dasuki told Expdonaloaded blog yesterday that he was still under house arrest. “It is still on. We will be in court tomorrow (today) to enforce my fundamental rights among other issues,” he replied.
The DSS had last Thursday laid a siege on Dasuki’s Abuja residence, insisting on seeing him physically to submit a letter of invitation for him to appear before a committee set up by the government to probe arms purchase while he (Dasuki) held sway as NSA.
Dasuki said he was not obliged to receive the letter from DSS, and asked the agency to submit the letter to his personal security at the gate.
“I told them that if it is just a letter of invite, they can drop it with my domestic staff, but they insisted that I must come out and collect it myself. I told them that unless they had a warrant allowing them to arrest me, I do not have to collect the letter from them and I am also not going anywhere without my lawyer,” he said.
Justice Ademola Adeniyi of the Federal High Court, Abuja had last Tuesday ordered that Dasuki’s interna­tional passport be returned to him to enable him travel to the United Kingdom for medical attention.
The former NSA said he shelved the idea of trav­elling on Wednesday after he received “intelligence” that the DSS planned to arrest him at the Abuja air­port.
Dasuki had alleged that the operatives were deter­mined to arrest him despite a court order allowing him to travel. The DSS, however, said its recent “standoff” with Dasuki was different from the case he was being tried for.
Sambo was initially arrested and charged to court for alleged unlawful possession of firearms and mon­ey laundering, for which his international passport was seized and on the order of the court, returned to the registrar for custody,” the DSS said in the state­ment.
“What has, however, brought the seeming standoff between Sambo and the Service, despite the court-ordered release of his international passport on No­vember 4, 2015, is his refusal to appear before a com­mittee investigating an entirely different case,” Tony Opuiyo, the spokesman, said.
Dasuki, however, denied the new claim by the DSS.
He also denied ever receiving any invitation letter to appear before a committee investigating procure­ment processes relating to any arms transaction by the last administration, under which he served.
He noted that it was strange that a committee pur­ported to be operating from the Office of the National Security Adviser could have transferred its mandate to the DSS.