By Alex Last
In London in 1984, a team of Nigerians and Israelis attempted to
kidnap and repatriate the exiled former Nigerian minister Umaru Dikko.
Mr Dikko, who had fled Nigeria after a military coup, was accused of
stealing $1bn (£625m) of government money.
The plot was foiled by a young British customs officer, Charles David
Morrow, who has now told the BBC World Service Witness programme what
happened.
On a summer’s day, Mr Dikko walked out of his front door in an
upmarket neighbourhood of Bayswater in London. Within seconds he had
been grabbed by two men and bundled into the back of a transit van.
“I remember the very violent way in which I was grabbed and hurled
into a van, with a huge fellow sitting on my head – and the way in which
they immediately put on me handcuffs and chains on my legs,” he told
the BBC a year later.
Mr Dikko had been minister for transport in the government of Shehu
Shagari until it was overthrown by the military at the end of 1983. He
fled to London accused by Nigeria’s new rulers of embezzlement – a
charge he has always denied.
*Umaru Dikko
Labelled “Nigeria’s most wanted man”, a plot was hatched to get both him and the money back.
The extraordinary plan was to kidnap Mr Dikko, drug him, stick him
into a specially made crate and put him on a plane back to Nigeria –
alive.
Israeli anesthetist
An Israeli alleged former Mossad agent, Alexander Barak, was
recruited to lead the kidnap team. It included a Nigerian intelligence
officer, Maj Mohammed Yusufu, and Israeli nationals, Felix Abitbol and
Dr Lev-Arie Shapiro, who was to inject Mr Dikko with an anesthetic.
The kidnappers switched vehicles in a car park by London Zoo and
headed towards Stansted airport where a Nigerian Airways plane was
waiting. They injected Mr Dikko and laid him, unconscious, in a crate.
The Israeli anesthetist climbed into the crate as well, carrying
medical equipment to make sure Mr Dikko didn’t die en route. Barak and
Abitbol got into a second crate. Both boxes were then sealed.
At the cargo terminal of Stansted Airport, 40 miles (64km) north of
London, a Nigerian diplomat was anxiously waiting for the crates to
arrive. Also on duty that day was a young customs officer, Charles David
Morrow.
Diplomatic bag
The day had gone fairly normally until about 3pm. Then we had the
handling agents come through and say that there was a cargo due to go on
a Nigerian Airways 707, but the people delivering it didn’t want it
manifested,” Mr Morrow said.
“I went downstairs to see who they were and what was happening. I met
a guy who turned out to be a Nigerian diplomat called Mr Edet. He
showed me his passport and he said it was diplomatic cargo. Being
ignorant of such matters, I asked him what it was, and he told me it was
just documents and things.”
A missing persons bulletin alerted customs officials to the kidnapping.
No-one on duty at Stansted had dealt with a diplomatic bag before and Mr Morrow went to check the procedure.
Just then a colleague returned from the passenger terminal with some
startling news. There was an All Ports Bulletin from Scotland Yard
saying that a Nigerian had been kidnapped and it was suspected he would
be smuggled out of the country.
The police had been alerted by Mr Dikko’s secretary who had witnessed his abduction from a window in the house.
Hearing the news, Mr Morrow realised he had a problem on his hands.
“I just put two and two together. The classic customs approach is not to look for the goods, you look for the space,” he said.
“So I am looking out of the window and I can see the space which is
these two crates, clearly big enough to get a man inside. We’ve got a
Nigerian Airways 707, which we don’t normally see. They don’t want the
crates manifested, so there would be no record of them having gone
through. And there was very little other cargo going on board the
aircraft.
“If you want to hide a tree, you hide it in the forest. You don’t stick it out in the middle of Essex.”
By the book
But any cargo designated as a diplomatic bag is protected by the
Vienna Convention from being opened by customs officers. So Mr Morrow
got on the phone to the British Foreign Office.
“To qualify as a ‘diplomatic bag’ they clearly had to be marked with
the words ‘Diplomatic Bag’ and they had to be accompanied by an
accredited courier with the appropriate documentation. It was fair to
say they had a Nigerian diplomat – I’d seen his passport – but they
didn’t have the right paperwork and they weren’t marked ‘Diplomatic
Bag’,” he said.
The decision was taken that the crates could be opened – but it would
be done by the book. That required the presence of a Nigerian diplomat,
but as Mr Morrow pointed out, one was already on hand. By now, the
crates were up on special trolleys ready to be loaded on to the plane.
“Peter, the cargo manager, hit the lid on the bottom and lifted it.
And as he lifted it, the Nigerian diplomat, who was standing next to me,
took off like a startled rabbit across the tarmac,” Mr Morrow said.
“You have to remember we are on an airfield which is square miles of
nothing. He ran about five yards (4.5m), realised no-one was chasing him
and then stopped.
“Peter looked into the crate and said: ‘There’s bodies inside!’
He parked a forklift truck so its tines lay across the top of the
crate so it couldn’t be opened. Mr Morrow dialled the emergency number
999.
“My name’s Morrow, from Customs at Stansted. We’ve got some bodies in
a crate. Do you think you can send someone over,” he recalls saying.
“They said: ‘Alive or Dead?’
“I said: ‘That’s a very good point. I don’t know.’
“They said: ‘We’ll send an ambulance as well.’”
After half an hour, police started to arrive, and they opened the
second crate. Inside they found an unconscious Mr Dikko, and a very much
awake Israeli anaesthetist. Mr Dikko was lying on his back in the
corner of the crate.
“He had no shirt on, he had a heart monitor on him, and he had a tube
in his throat to keep his airway open. No shoes and socks and handcuffs
around his ankles. The Israeli anaesthetist was in there, clearly to
keep him alive,” recalls Mr Morrow.
The kidnappers in the other crate were unrepentant. They said Mr Dikko was the biggest crook in the world.
The Nigerian intelligence officer and the three Israelis all received prison sentences in the UK.
Diplomatic relations between the UK and Nigeria broke down and were
only fully restored two years later. The Nigerian and Israeli
governments have always denied involvement in the kidnapping.
Mr Dikko returned to Nigeria the following decade and still lives there.
Mr Morrow was commended for actions that day by the head of UK Customs, who described the incident as a “very tricky situation”.
Vanguard
