Ghana immigration detains Nigerian US resident

Immigration authorities in Ghana are holding, since January, a Nigerian businessman normally resident in the United States over what his relatives suspect is a "fraudulent seizure" of his US-issued travel documents and his New York Drivers License, according to his friends and relatives.

Mr. Remi Irinoye was said to have traveled to Ghana last year and was returning on Sept. 11, when passengers on Ghana Airways including him where asked to disembark from the aircraft after the terror attacks in New York and DC had just taken place and the US airspace subsequently shut.

About a week later on Sept 18, when the US airspace was reopened, Irinoye went back to the airport and although he had been cleared before, Ghana Immigration officials alleged that he was traveling with papers that were not his own. His explanation that the papers were genuinely his own fell on deaf ears as the papers were seized. He was then asked to go to the US embassy and was told that the travel papers were passed on to US officials at the airport. His friends here also faxed corroborating documents to him to prove the validity of his papers, but all to no avail.

For three months he could not get an appointment at the US Embassy in Ghana. When he did eventually on Jan. 18, in Accra however, Irinoye was told that the travel papers were with the Ghana officials who took the papers from him and not with the Embassy officials. The US Embassy officials assured him that once he got back his travel documents from the Ghana Immigration officials, he should return to the Embassy and would be admitted back to the US.

He then went back to the airport to pursue the return of his papers only to be told by the Immigration officials there that if he chose he could get arrested over the matter or otherwise he should just leave.

A shocked Irinoye refused to leave and has been held by the Ghana officials since then without any charge made against him. Irinoye told his relatives and friends here in the U.S. that he feared that the officials may have sold his travel papers to someone else judging from their threat and the way they responded to him when he went back to the Ghana Immigration officials at the airport.

Although he has since retained a lawyer to take on his case, but Irinoye has remained in detention since January. His lawyers here told his relatives that they do not have enough room to operate in the matter since they have no jurisdiction in Ghana.

According to a friend, who spoke on behalf of the family and friends of Irinoye in New York, Mr. Dele Moses, "our lawyers here asked us to contact the State Dept. and we have contacted the State Dept. but we are getting the run around." Moses also said plans are on to retain a new lawyer for him in Ghana and also ensure that his rights are respected.