Michael Karkoc, Minnesota Man, Was Top Commander Of Nazi SS-Led Unit: AP Report

BERLIN — A top commander of a Nazi SS-led unit accused of burning villages filled with women and children lied to American immigration officials to get into the United States and has been living in Minnesota since shortly after World War II, according to evidence uncovered by The Associated Press.

Michael Karkoc, 94, told American authorities in 1949 that he had performed no military service during World War II, concealing his work as an officer and founding member of the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion and later as an officer in the SS Galician Division, according to records obtained by the AP through a Freedom of Information Act request. The Galician Division and a Ukrainian nationalist organization he served in were both on a secret American government blacklist of organizations whose members were forbidden from entering the United States at the time.

Though records do not show that Karkoc had a direct hand in war crimes, statements from men in his unit and other documentation confirm the Ukrainian company he commanded massacred civilians, and suggest that Karkoc was at the scene of these atrocities as the company leader. Nazi SS files say he and his unit were also involved in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which the Nazis brutally suppressed a Polish rebellion against German occupation.

Polish prosecutors announced Friday after the release of the AP investigation that they will investigate Karkoc and provide "every possible assistance" to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has used lies in immigration papers to deport dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals. The AP evidence of Karkoc's wartime activities has also prompted German authorities to express interest in exploring whether there is enough to prosecute. In Germany, Nazis with "command responsibility" can be charged with war crimes even if their direct involvement in atrocities cannot be proven.

Karkoc refused to discuss his wartime past at his home in Minneapolis, and repeated efforts to set up an interview, using his son as an intermediary, were unsuccessful.

Efraim Zuroff, the lead Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said that based on his decades of experience pursuing Nazi war criminals, he expects that the evidence showing Karkoc lied to American officials and that his unit carried out atrocities is strong enough for deportation and war-crimes prosecution in Germany or Poland.

"In America this is a relatively easy case: If he was the commander of a unit that carried out atrocities, that's a no brainer," Zuroff said. "Even in Germany ... if the guy was the commander of the unit, then even if they can't show he personally pulled the trigger, he bears responsibility."

Former German army officer Josef Scheungraber – a lieutenant like Karkoc – was convicted in Germany in 2009 on charges of murder based on circumstantial evidence that put him on the scene of a Nazi wartime massacre in Italy as the ranking officer.

German prosecutors are obligated to open an investigation if there is enough "initial suspicion" of possible involvement in war crimes, said Thomas Walther, a former prosecutor with the special German office that investigates Nazi war crimes.

The current deputy head of that office, Thomas Will, said there is no indication that Karkoc had ever been investigated by Germany. Based on the AP's evidence, he said he is now interested in gathering information that could possibly result in prosecution.

Prosecution in Poland may also be a possibility because most of the unit's alleged crimes were against Poles on Polish territory. But Karkoc would be unlikely to be tried in his native Ukraine, where such men are today largely seen as national heroes who fought for the country against the Soviet Union.

Karkoc now lives in a modest house in northeast Minneapolis in an area with a significant Ukrainian population. Even at his advanced age, he came to the door without help of a cane or a walker. He would not comment on his wartime service for Nazi Germany.

"I don't think I can explain," he said.

Members of his unit and other witnesses have told stories of brutal attacks on civilians.

One of Karkoc's men, Vasyl Malazhenski, told Soviet investigators that in 1944 the unit was directed to "liquidate all the residents" of the village of Chlaniow in a reprisal attack for the killing of a German SS officer, though he did not say who gave the order.

"It was all like a trance: setting the fires, the shooting, the destroying," Malazhenski recalled, according to the 1967 statement found by the AP in the archives of Warsaw's state-run Institute of National Remembrance, which investigates and prosecutes German and Soviet crimes on Poles during and after World War II.

"Later, when we were passing in file through the destroyed village," Malazhenski said, "I could see the dead bodies of the killed residents: men, women, children."

In a background check by U.S. officials on April 14, 1949, Karkoc said he had never performed any military service, telling investigators that he "worked for father until 1944. Worked in labor camp from 1944 until 1945."

However, in a Ukrainian-language memoir published in 1995, Karkoc states that he helped found the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion in 1943 in collaboration with the Nazis' feared SS intelligence agency, the SD, to fight on the side of Germany – and served as a company commander in the unit, which received orders directly from the SS, through the end of the war.

It was not clear why Karkoc felt safe publishing his memoir, which is available at the U.S. Library of Congress and the British Library and which the AP located online in an electronic Ukrainian library.

Karkoc's name surfaced when a retired clinical pharmacologist who took up Nazi war crimes research in his free time came across it while looking into members of the SS Galician Division who emigrated to Britain. He tipped off AP when an Internet search showed an address for Karkoc in Minnesota.

"Here was a chance to publicly confront a man who commanded a company alleged to be involved in the cruel murder of innocent people," said Stephen Ankier, who is based in London.

The AP located Karkoc's U.S. Army intelligence file, and got it declassified by the National Archives in Maryland through a FOIA request. The Army was responsible for processing visa applications after the war under the Displaced Persons Act.

The intelligence file said standard background checks with seven different agencies found no red flags that would disqualify him from entering the United States. But it also noted that it lacked key information from the Soviet side: "Verification of identity and complete establishment of applicant's reliability is not possible due to the inaccessibility of records and geographic area of applicant's former residence."

Wartime documents located by the AP also confirm Karkoc's membership in the Self Defense Legion. They include a Nazi payroll sheet found in Polish archives, signed by an SS officer on Jan. 8, 1945 – only four months before the war's end – confirming that Karkoc was present in Krakow, Poland, to collect his salary as a member of the Self Defense Legion. Karkoc signed the document using Cyrillic letters.

Karkoc, an ethnic Ukrainian, was born in the city of Lutsk in 1919, according to details he provided American officials. At the time, the area was being fought over by Ukraine, Poland and others; it ended up part of Poland until World War II. Several wartime Nazi documents note the same birth date, but say he was born in Horodok, a town in the same region.

He joined the regular German army after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and fought on the Eastern Front in Ukraine and Russia, according to his memoirs, which say he was awarded an Iron Cross, a Nazi award for bravery.

He was also a member of the Ukrainian nationalist organization OUN; in 1943, he helped negotiate with the Nazis to have men drawn from its membership form the Self Defense Legion, according to his account. Initially small, it eventually numbered some 600 soldiers. The legion was dissolved and folded into the SS Galician Division in 1945; Karkoc wrote that he remained with it until the end of the war.

Policy at the time of Karkoc's immigration application – according to a declassified secret U.S. government document obtained by the AP from the National Archives – was to deny a visa to anyone who had served in either the SS Galician Division or the OUN. The U.S. does not typically have jurisdiction to prosecute Nazi war crimes but has won more than 100 "denaturalization and removal actions" against people suspected of them.

Department of Justice spokesman Michael Passman would not comment on whether Karkoc had ever come to the department's attention, citing a policy not to confirm or deny the existence of investigations.

Though Karkoc talks in his memoirs about fighting anti-Nazi Polish resistance fighters, he makes no mention of attacks on civilians. He does indicate he was with his company in the summer of 1944 when the Self Defense Legion's commander – Siegfried Assmuss, whose SS rank was equivalent to major – was killed.

"We lost an irreplaceable commander, Assmuss," he wrote about the partisan attack near Chlaniow.

He did not mention the retaliatory massacre that followed, which was described in detail by Malazhenski in his 1967 statement used to help convict platoon leader Teodozy Dak of war crimes in Poland in 1972. An SS administrative list obtained by AP shows that Karkoc commanded both Malazhenski and Dak, who died in prison in 1974.

Malazhenski said the Ukrainian unit was ordered to liquidate Chlaniow in reprisal for Assmuss' death, and moved in the next day, machine-gunning people and torching homes. More than 40 people died.

"The village was on fire," Malazhenski said.

Villagers offered chilling testimony about the brutality of the attack.

In 1948, Chlaniow villager Stanislawa Lipska told a communist-era commission that she heard shots at about 7 a.m., then saw "the Ukrainian SS force" entering the town, calling out in Ukrainian and Polish for people to come out of their homes.

"The Ukrainians were setting fire to the buildings," Lipska said in a statement, also used in the Dak trial. "You could hear machine-gun shots and grenade explosions. Shots could be heard inside the village and on the outskirts. They were making sure no one escaped."

Witness statements and other documentation also link the unit circumstantially to a 1943 massacre in Pidhaitsi, on the outskirts of Lutsk _today part of Ukraine – where the Self Defense Legion was once based. A total of 21 villagers, mostly women and children, were slaughtered.

Karkoc says in his memoir that his unit was founded and headquartered there in 1943 and later mentions that Pidhaitsi was still the unit's base in January 1944.

Another legion member, Kost Hirniak, said in his own 1977 memoir that the unit, while away on a mission, was suddenly ordered back to Pidhaitsi after a German soldier was killed in the area; it arrived on Dec. 2, 1943.

The next day, though Hirniak does not mention it, nearly two dozen civilians, primarily women and children, were slaughtered in Pidhaitsi. There is no indication any other units were in the area at the time.

Heorhiy Syvyi was a 9-year-old boy when troops swarmed into town on Dec. 3 and managed to flee with his father and hide in a shelter covered with branches. His mother and 4-year-old brother were killed.

"When we came out we saw the smoldering ashes of the burned house and our neighbors searching for the dead. My mother had my brother clasped to her chest. This is how she was found – black and burned," said Syvyi, 78, sitting on a bench outside his home.

Villagers today blame the attack generically on "the Nazis" – something that experts say is not unusual in Ukraine because of the exalted status former Ukrainian nationalist troops enjoy.

However, Pidhaitsi schoolteacher Galyna Sydorchuk told the AP that "there is a version" of the story in the village that the Ukrainian troops were involved in the December massacre.

"There were many in Pidhaitsi who were involved in the Self Defense Legion," she said. "But they obviously keep it secret."

Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian political scientist who has done extensive research on the Self Defense Legion, said its members have been careful to cultivate the myth that their service to Nazi Germany was solely a fight against Soviet communism. But he said its actions – fighting partisans and reprisal attacks on civilians – tell a different story.

"Under the pretext of anti-partisan action they acted as a kind of police unit to suppress and kill or punish the local populations. This became their main mission," said Katchanovski, who went to high school in Pidhaitsi and now teaches at the University of Ottawa in Canada. "There is evidence of clashes with Polish partisans, but most of their clashes were small, and their most visible actions were mass killings of civilians."

There is evidence that the unit took part in the brutal suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, fighting the nationalist Polish Home Army as it sought to rid the city of its Nazi occupiers and take control of the city ahead of the advancing Soviet Army.

The uprising, which started in August 1944, was put down by the Nazis by the beginning of October in a house-to-house fight characterized by its ferocity.

The Self Defense Legion's exact role is not known, but Nazi documents indicate that Karkoc and his unit were there.

An SS payroll document, dated Oct. 12, 1944, says 10 members of the Self Defense Legion "fell while deployed to Warsaw" and more than 30 others were injured. Karkoc is listed as the highest-ranking commander of 2 Company – a lieutenant – on a pay sheet that also lists Dak as one of his officers.

Another Nazi accounting document uncovered by the AP in the Polish National Archives in Krakow lists Karkoc by name – including his rank, birthdate and hometown – as one of 219 "members of the S.M.d.S.-Batl 31 who were in Warsaw," using the German abbreviation for the Self Defense Legion.

In early 1945, the Self Defense Legion was integrated into the SS Galicia Division, and Karkoc said in his memoirs that he served as a deputy company commander until the end of the war.

Following the war, Karkoc ended up in a camp for displaced people in Neu Ulm, Germany, according to documents obtained from the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The documents indicate that his wife died in 1948, a year before he and their two young boys – born in 1945 and 1946 – emigrated to the U.S.

After he arrived in Minneapolis, he remarried and had four more children, the last born in 1966.

Karkoc told American officials he was a carpenter, and records indicate he worked for a nationwide construction company that has an office in Minneapolis.

A longtime member of the Ukrainian National Association, Karkoc has been closely involved in community affairs over the past decades and was identified in a 2002 article in a Ukrainian-American publication as a "longtime UNA activist."

The lights were on at Karkoc's home Friday morning, but nobody answered a knock from an AP reporter seeking reaction to this story.

Karkoc's next-door neighbor said has known the Ukrainian immigrant for many years, and was stunned to learn about the Nazi past of a man he has shared laughs with and known as a churchgoer.

"For me, this is a shock," said Gordon Gnasdoskey, 79. "To come to this country and take advantage of its freedoms all of these years, it blows my mind."

___

Herschaft reported from New York and Scislowska from Warsaw; Doug Glass, Patrick Condon and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Maria Danilova in Kiev, Ukraine; Efrem Lukatsky in Pidhaitsi, and Svetlana Fedas in Lviv, Ukraine, contributed to this story.

HuffingtonPost

MKO Abiola’s Death: I Won’t Talk For Personal Reasons - Susan Rice

By: Abiodun Oluwarotimi, George Agba, OLAOLU OLADIPO , Taiwo Ogunmola-Omiliani

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The outgoing permanent representative of the United States of America to the United Nations (UN), Ambassador Susan Rice, has said that she will not make any comment on what transpired during the last moments of the acclaimed winner of the June 12, 1993, presidential election, Chief MKO Abiola, for personal reasons.

Rice was the assistant secretary of state for African affairs at the time Chief Abiola died on July 7, 1998.

Our correspondent had sought her comment over what happened before the late business mogul started gasping for breath after allegedly taking a cup of tea that was served by Rice. But after waiting for another three hours and no response was forthcoming, our correspondent called Rice’s number and her secretary said that the ambassador had said she would not be making any comments on the matter owing to her personal reasons.

Also, a former United States ambassador to Nigeria who was also with the former Social Democratic Party (SDP) presidential candidate on the day he died, Thomas Pickering, declined to make comments when our correspondent sent him an electronic mail.

Controversy had trailed the aftermath of the political impasse that followed the annulled June 12 election by the then Gen Ibrahim Babangida-led military junta as there were rumours  that the late Abiola died as a result of a poisoned cup of tea that was personally handed to him by  Rice in the presence of Pickering.

Information had it that the tea that Rice served Abiola had already been poisoned by agents of the then federal government of Nigeria.

Pickering’s aides stationed at his Woodrow Institute office, who refused to mention his name to our correspondent during a telephone conversation, initially promised to get a comment from him but later said that the former US ambassador would not like to speak on the issue due to security reasons.

The aide also refused to release Ambassador Pickering’s direct mobile numbers when pressed by LEADERSHIP on Wednesday morning.

Our correspondent also made several efforts to get the reactions of Ambassador  Rice who has just been named as the incoming national security adviser to President Barack Obama but she did not make any comment on the issue when telephone calls were placed on her office lines at the United States Permanent Mission the the United Nations.

When our correspondent first called, the secretary of the United States Mission in New York, Ms Harrera Kathleen, said that the ambassador was not ready to partake in the telephone interview that was earlier suggested by our correspondent.

She advised that our correspondent should send an electronic mail consisting of the questions that Ambassador Rice was expected to answer to her personal e-mail address. But after the e-mail was sent, Ms Kathleen warned that our correspondent should not continue until a response was given by Rice.

June 12 changed Nigeria’s political history - Jonathan

In a related development, President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday described June 12 as a unique day which has changed the political history of the country in some ways, saying it was a day that must be appreciated.

Speaking when he swore in the new Police Service Commission chairman, Mr Mike Okiro, and five members of the commission at the presidential villa, Abuja, Jonathan acknowledged the fact that, while the day in which the late Abiola was declared winner of the presidential poll said to be one of the fairest general elections in the history of the country has not been declared at the federal government as public holiday, some governors in their various states have made it a work-free day.

He said: “Today is also a unique day -- June 12. It is a date that has changed the political history of this country in one way or the other. In some parts of the country, some state governments have declared public holiday to mark today but at the centre it has not been formally recognised as a public holiday. We appreciate what happened on this day, that you are being inaugurated on this date. I think it is a unique date.”

MKO watered the seeds of democracy - Akpabio

Akwa Ibom State governor Godswill Akpabio also paid tribute to the late politician, saying that “Abiola watered the democracy we are enjoying today”. Akpabio also debunked allegations that he rigged election in favour a member of the National Assembly, noting that what is often referred to as rigging was indeed pre-primaries consultations and preparation of a suitable aspirant, which was done to protect the interest of the people of Ini and Ikono LGAs of the Ikot Ekpene senatorial district, who are in the minority with only two councils.

Akpabio made the declaration in a speech delivered at thecelebration of the 20th anniversary of the annulment of the June 12 presidential elections organised by the June 12 Movement at the Toyin Street, Ikeja, residence of the Abiolas. The event was chaired by a prominent Afenifere chieftain, Chief Ayo Adebanjo.

Represented by his commissioner for information and communications, Mr Aniekan Umanah, Akpabio declared that, “Abiola paid the supreme price. He died so that we may live and savour the joy of a free people. Freedom which is concomitant with democracy is not negotiable. It is an inalienable right of every human being. That is what Abiola fought and died for and we must not allow that death to be in vain. We must continue to engage our leaders until our collective dignity as a people are fully realised and restored. “

Some key personalities who graced the occasion were speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly Bayo Ikuforiji; Hon. Abike Dabiri: Alhaji Yerima Shetima, president, Arewa Youth Consultative Forum; Comrade Joe Evah, coordinator, Ijaw Monitoring Group, among others.

Count Babangida out of MKO’s death – Abiola’s younger brother

Meanwhile, the younger brother to the late Abiola, Mubashiru Abiola, yesterday absolved former military president Gen. Ibrahim Babangida of any complicity in the death of Chief Moshood Abiola.

Abiola, who spoke with journalists at the family house at Oja Agbo in Abeokuta, Ogun State, said Babangida had been a very good supporter of the family.

He said, “There was a time Abiola’s daughter was having her wedding, Babangida was here with his wife right from Minna, he sat down with us; he left his wife to stay with us till the second day; she slept in the MKO’s house for the second day.

“That is the major reason I will always support him and I do not believe that Babangida was the one that killed MKO. No, that it is capital NO. Everybody knew that Babangida was not in the government then when MKO died. How could you say that somebody who is not somewhere that he did something?”

History will make immortalization of my father happen - Kola Abiola

The first son of the late Abiola, Kola, has stated that history will force the hands of those in authority to accord his father his due place in history.

Speaking in Lagos at a function organized by the Save Nigeria Group (SNG) to mark the 20th anniversary of the June 12, 1993, presidential election, Kola stated that his father was a victim of conspiracy against him by those who felt he had something to offer Nigerians.

He said, “History will make it happen; the biggest problem that I see is that some people are trying to rewrite history. May 29/June 12 is a perfect example. For a while we had this ministry of African affairs that was set up to rewrite my father’s history.”

At the event tagged “Democracy Audit”, he stated for the first time since the event 20 years ago that some people in government were doing all they could to downplay the achievements of his late father but that his legacies have continued to endure.

Kola Abiola: “He (MKO) was a victim; a man who paid the price of being a man, who came ahead of his time. He was ahead of his peers and he paid the price for that in the interest of the country and its people.”

Democracy in Nigeria has lost legitimacy - Utomi

Also, a former president candidate of the Africa Democratic Congress (ADC) and political economist, Professor Pat Utomi, has said that democracy in Nigeria has lost its legitimacy over the years, insisting that people must be given chance to speak through the ballot.

He disclosed this as a guest lecturer at the special parliamentary session in commemoration of the second anniversary of the 7th Assembly and 20 years of June 12 held at the Lagos State House of Assembly yesterday.

In his lecture entitled “Democracy, the rule of law and role of the legislature”, Utomi said, “Our democracy has lost its legitimacy over the years. Unless we have a clear democracy where people speak through the ballot box, we cannot have the kind of legitimacy that we need. We are determined as a people; we can prevent abusers from leading us to where we are today”.

Utomi affirmed that June 12 should be a day to celebrate the passion, commitment and courage of a man, MKO Abiola, who won the 1993 presidential election.

He maintained that Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, who was the chairman of National Electoral Commission (NEC) in 1993, should also be remembered whenever June 12 is celebrated.

- See more at: http://leadership.ng/news/130613/mko-abiola-s-death-i-won-t-talk-personal-reasons-susan-rice#sthash.oKAQdN0Q.dpuf

THE ANINI SAGA.

Very interesting reading this . Pls share in d flash back ! ..." Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini, Nigeria’s acclaimed most notorious armed robber, was born sometimes in 1960. He terrorised the old Bendel State, especially its capital, Benin City in the 1980s, but in 1986, his robbery exploits reached a terrific level that it became a national issue. He operated along with his lieutenant, Monday Osunbor, and others. However, one striking feature in the Anini reign of terror was the police complicity. It was soon discovered that the Anini gang had insiders within the police hierarchy of which George Iyamu, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, was their arrowhead.

Anini, dreadfully called ‘The Law’ or ‘Ovbigbo’, was born in a village about 20 miles from Benin City. He migrated to Benin at an early age, learned to drive and became a skilled taxi driver in a few years. He became known in Benin motor parks as a man who could control the varied competing interest among motor park touts and operators. He later resorted to criminal acts in the city and soon became a driver and transporter for gangs, criminal godfathers and thieves. Later on, he decided to create his own gang and they started out as car hijackers, bus robbers and bank thieves. Gradually, he extended his criminal acts to other towns and cities far north and east of Benin.

The complicity of the police is believed to have triggered Anini’s reign of terror in 1986. In early 1986, two members of his gang were tried and prosecuted against an earlier under-the-table­ ‘agreement’ with the police to destroy evidence against the gang members. The incident, and Anini’s view of police betrayal, is believed to have spurred retaliatory actions by Anini. In August, 1986, a fatal bank robbery linked to Anini was reported in which a police officer and others were killed. That same month, two officers on duty were shot at a barricade while trying to stop Anini’s car. During a span of three months, he was known to have killed nine police officers.

Anini’s exploits

In an operation in August of 1986, the Anini team struck at First Bank, Sabongida-Ora, where they carted away N2, 000. But although the amount stolen was seen as chicken feed, they left the scene with a trail of blood. Many persons were killed.

On September 6, same year, the Anini gang snatched a Peugeot 504 car from Albert Otoe, the driver of an Assistant Inspector General of Police, Christopher Omeben. In snatching the car, they killed the driver and went to hide his corpse somewhere. It was not until three months later that the skeleton of the driver was spotted 16 kilometers away from Benin, along the Benin-Agbor highway. A day after this attack, Anini, operating in a Passat car believed to have been stolen, also effected the snatching of another Peugeot 504 car near the former FEDECO office, in Benin.

Two days after, the Anini men killed two policemen in Orhiowon Local Government of the state. Still in that month, three different robbery attacks, all pointing to Anini’s involvement, took place. They include the murder of Frank Unoarumi, a former employee of the Nigerian Observer newspapers; the killing of Mrs. Remi Sobanjo, a chartered accountant, and the stealing of the Mercedes Benz car in Benin, of the Ughelli monarch, the Ovie.

Before September, 1986 drew to a close, Anini, now steaming hot and an elusive dread, struck at a gas station along Wire Road, Benin, where he stole a substantial part of the day’s sales. He shot the Station’s attendant and gleefully started spraying his booty along the road for people to pick.

The height of Anini’s exploits, however, took place on October 1, 1986, the Independence Day when the state’s Commissioner of Police, Casmir Igbokwe was ambushed by the gang in Benin, and nearly yanked off his nose in a hail of bullets. The police boss survived the attacks with serious injuries. Earlier that day also, the Anini men had gunned down a police man within the city

Also, on October 21 of same year, the Anini robbery gang terminated the life of a Benin-based medical doctor, A.O Emojeve when they gunned him down along Textile Mill Road, in Benin. Not done, Anini and gang went and robbed the Agbor branch of African Continental Bank and carted away about N46, 000. A day after the operation, Anini, The Law, turned to a ‘Father Christmas’ as he strew wads of naira notes on the ground for free pick by market men and women at a village near Benin.

Anini’s image thus loomed larger than life, dwarfing those of Ishola Oyenusi, the king of robbers in the 1970s and Youpelle Dakuro, the army deserter who masterminded the most vicious daylight robbery in Lagos in 1978, in which two policemen were killed. Anini thus spear-headed a four-month reign of terror between August and December 1986. Anini also reportedly wrote numerous letters to media houses using political tones of Robin Hood-like words, to describe his criminal acts.

My friend, where is Anini?

Worried by the seeming elusiveness of Anini and his gang members, the military President, General Ibrahim Babangida then ordered a massive manhunt for the kingpin and his fellow robbers. The police thus went after them, combing every part of Bendel State where they were reportedly operating and living. The whole nation was gripped with fear of the robbers and their daredevil exploits.

However, Police manhunt failed to stop their activities; the more they were hunted, the more intensified their activities became.

Some of the locals in the area even began to tell stories of their invincibility and for a while, it felt like they were never going to be caught.

However, at the conclusion of a meeting of the Armed Forces Ruling Council in October 1986, General Babangida turned to the Inspector- General of Police, Etim Inyang, and asked, ‘My friend, where is Anini?’.

At about this time, Nigerian newspapers and journals were also publishing various reports and editorials on the ‘Anini Challenge’, the ‘Anini Saga’, the ‘Anini Factor’, ‘Lawrence Anini – the Man, the Myth’, ‘Anini, Jack the Ripper’, and ‘Lawrence Anini: A Robin Hood in Bendel’. The Guardian asked, emphatically, in one of its reports: ‘Will they ever find Anini, “The Law”?’.

His arrest

Finally, it took the courage of Superintendent of Police, Kayode Uanreroro to bring the Anini reign of terror to an end. On December 3, 1986, Uanreroro caught Anini at No 26, Oyemwosa Street, opposite Iguodala Primary School, Benin City, in company with six women. Acting on a tip-off from the locals, the policeman went straight to the house where Anini was hiding and apprehended him with very little resistance. Uanreroro led a crack 10-man team to the house, knocked on the door of the room, and Anini himself, clad in underpants, opened the door. “Where is Anini,” the police officer quickly enquired. Dazed as he was caught off guard and having no escape route, Anini all the same tried to be smart. “Oh, Anini is under the bed in the inner room”. As he said it, he made some moves to walk past Uanreroro and his team. In the process, he shoved and head-butted the police officer but it was an exercise in futility.

Uanreroro promptly reached for his gun, stepped hard on Anini’s right toes and shot at his left ankle. Anini surged forward but the policemen took hold of him and put him in a sitting position. They then pumped more bullets into his shot leg and almost severed the ankle from his entire leg. Already, anguished by the excruciating pains, the policemen asked him, “Are you Anini?” And he replied, “My brother, I won’t deceive you; I won’t tell you lie, I’m Anini.” He was from there taken to the police command headquarters where the state’s Police Commissioner, Parry Osayande, was waiting. While in the police net, Anini who had poor command of English and could only communicate in pidgin, made a whole lot of revelations. He disclosed, for instance that Osunbor, who had been arrested earlier, was his deputy, saying that Osunbor actually shot and wounded the former police boss of the state, Akagbosu

Anini was shot in the leg, transferred to a military hospital, and had one of his legs amputated. That was after Monday Osunbor was also captured.

When Anini’s hideout was searched, police recovered assorted charms, including the one he usually wore around his waist during “operations”.

It was instructive that after Anini was captured and dispossessed of his charms, the man who terrorised a whole state and who was supposed to be fearless suddenly became remorseful, making confessions. This was against public expectation of a daredevil hoodlum who would remain defiant to the very end.

Revelations on Iyamu, others

Shortly after the arrest of Anini and co, the dare-devil robbers began to squeal, revealing the roles played by key police officers and men, in the aid ing and abetting of criminals in Bendel State and the entire country. Anini particularly revealed that Iyamu, who was the most senior police officer shielding the robbers, would reveal police secrets to them and then, give them logistic supports such as arms, to carry out robbery operations. He further revealed that Iyamu, after each operation, would join them in sharing the loot. It was further exposed how Iyamu planned to kill Christopher Omeben, an Assistant Inspector-Gener­al of Police in charge of Intelligence and Investigation. But Iyamu was later to be disappointed as the assailants dispatched to eliminate Omeben were only able to kill his driver, Otue, a sergeant.

Iyamu, whom the robbers fondly referred to as ‘Baba’, reportedly had choice buildings in Benin City; being how he invested the loots he obtained from men of the underworld

Trial and execution

Due to amputation of his leg, Anini was confined to a wheelchair throughout his trial. Iyamu, on his part, denied ever knowing and collaborating with Anini, but Anini The Law furiously retorted, “You are a shameless liar!” Anini had accused him before Justice James Omo-Agege in the High Court of Justice, off Sapele Road in Benin City. Of the 10 police officers Anini implicated, five were convicted. The robbery suspects, including Iyamu, were sentenced to death. But in passing his judgement, Justice Omo-Agege remarked, “Anini will forever be remembered in the history of crime in this country, but it would be of unblessed memory. Few people if ever, would give the name to their children.” Their execution took place on March 29, 1987.
via: fb.

UK: Nigerian oil tycoon loses £17.5m divorce battle

The ex-English wife of a Nigerian oil tycoon, Michael Prest, yesterday won a lengthy court battle in Britain for properties he owned worth millions of pounds, in a Supreme Court ruling with significant implications for divorcing couples.

Lawyers for Prest had claimed the properties were not his to hand over because they were legally owned by companies in his Petrodel group. But seven judges at the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, ruled unanimously in favour of his English wife Yasmin, who he married in 1993 and divorced in 2011.

They found the disputed properties were held on trust for Michael Prest and he was “beneficially entitled” to them, and as such they were eligible to be transferred to his ex-wife. Mr Prest was not in court to hear the judgement being delivered over the £17.5m divorce settlement.

The United Kigdom’s Supreme Court judgement marks the latest round of a lengthy legal cash dispute between the couple over Prest’s fortune. In October, the Court of Appeal ruled that a High Court judge had earlier wrongly ordered Mr Prest to transfer properties, worth millions of pounds and held in the names of companies he controlled, to Mrs Prest.

She then asked the Supreme Court, the highest court in the UK to assess the case, where seven judges yesterday unanimously allowed Mrs Prest’s appeal.

Prest, founder of Nigerian energy company Petrodel Resources, claimed to be worth about £48m.But Mrs Prest said he was worth much more than than that: “tens if not hundreds of millions” of pounds.

Mrs Prest said after the decision: “I’m delighted and relieved that the Supreme Court has ruled as it did. “I’m grateful to the judges for the care and thought they gave the case. It is more a case of satisfaction and relief than celebration. None of this would have been necessary if Michael had been sensible and played fair.”

Judges heard the couple in their early 50s married in 1993, spent most of their time in London, had properties in Nigeria and the Caribbean and lived to a “very high standard”.

Lawyers said the new ruling could have significant implications for divorcing couples.

The challenge concerned the position of a number of companies belonging to the Petrodel Group which are “wholly owned and controlled” by Mr Prest. One of the companies is the legal owner of five residential properties in the UK and another is the legal owner of two more.

The question the Supreme Court had to tackle was whether the court had power to order the transfer of the seven properties to Mrs Prest, given that they legally belonged to his companies, not him. Allowing Mrs Prest’s appeal, the court declared that the seven disputed properties vested in the companies were ones that Mr Prest was “entitled, either in possession or in reversion”.

One of the judges, Lord Jonathan Sumpton, said it was not possible to give “general guidance” following the ruling, saying the issue of whether company assets were  beneficially owned by their controller was a “fact-specific issue”.

But family law experts said the ruling was highly significant. “It means that business people cannot deliberately ‘hide’ their assets in businesses and corporate structures to protect them in future in the event of a divorce,” said Alison Hawes, a specialist family lawyer at Irwin Mitchell.

Marilyn Stowe, senior partner of Stowe family law, said the ruling was a “victory for common sense” and the judges had found an “ingenious way” around existing company and family law.

Michael Hutchinson, a partner at law firm Mayer Brown, said experts would be poring over the “extraordinary” judgement for some time to try to understand its limits. “The Supreme Court has handed down a landmark decision in which, for the first time since at least the end of the 19th century, it has accepted a general exception to the rule against ‘piercing the corporate veil’,” he said.

TheSun

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Tinubu On The Cusp Of History by Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú

A few days to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) senatorial primaries, he had 63 banked delegates and he needed 70 to edge out Funso Williams, Dr. Dominic Adegbola and emerge as the party’s flag-bearer for Lagos West Senatorial district. There was only one path to winning the primaries – get the delegates and secure them against defection. His politically suave mother sent him to Justice Akinyemi Obe. He told Justice Obe he needed 7 delegates, Obe told him delegates can defect before and on the day of primaries. He stressed the need to have more delegates than the number needed to win. From Obe’s network of contacts came 10 delegates, who were lodged, fed and closely guarded until the primaries. As predicted, 3 delegates defected leaving him with exactly the 70 he needed to win the primaries.

Tinubu the politician was born. When it comes to political strategy, Asiwaju Tinubu is in a class of one. He is the bell cow of Nigerian politics, a quick study and a tenacious worker with a manic work ethic. He it was, who prevented the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) overrun of the Southwest and single-handedly extricated us from the death grip of the PDP. He is canny, irascible, and ruthless but he alone saw the need to recast, remold and refocus the middling Southwest into a real political machine. With the formation of All Progressives Congress (APC), Tinubu is on the cusp of history, he knows it, we know it. He needs to eschew self-importance and make history. He must set aside all forms of ego and help us find and elect a leader who can lead this country. The candidate to beat Jonathan must be young, driven, patriotic, articulate and must be adaptable to compromise and triangulation.

Goodluck Jonathan is beatable in 2015, he is more vulnerable than venerable. He can enjoy all the powers of incumbency, with the deepest pockets in the race, surrounded by a thousand Joe Trippi, he will still lose and lose big. We know he is willing to bet the nation’s resources on 2015, preferring a Hail Mary strategy to the march of developmental progress but that is still no match for people’s will. The path to electoral victory for the APC is easier than the path for PDP. The APC can take the Northeast, Northwest and the Southwest with pockets of plurality of votes from the middle belt. Jonathan can cling to what is left of his South South base and the Southeast. The 2015 campaign must adopt the American model with dueling attack ads, poll driven political positioning and dumbed-down campaign themes.

With spiraling youth population, 2015 election must focus on getting out the youth vote and be the most technologically adept campaign in Nigeria’s history. The APC must device shrewd political tactics that can leap cultural and linguistic barriers in a single bound. Every effort must be made to highlight and project Jonathan’s swashbuckling arrogance. The opposition must arm itself with guttersnipe politics knowing every voter has interest in acquiring more information about candidates than they can get from their neighbours and the feel-good glimpses on television. Jonathan has amassed enough language and acts of impunity to bury him. The opposition only needs to stay on the message and distance itself from the clotted conformity of Nigeria’s enemies. They must prove and convey the sense that the political machinery of the PDP is greased by insincerity, graft and greed. Nigeria’s reality calls for ceaseless attack on PDP as a party and on Jonathan’s lack luster record and years of failure. The PDP, her skein of looters and economic saboteurs must be called out.

PDP as a party is ripe for picking but the opposition must not take them lightly. They should enlist an army of bright boys and girls, and vast foot soldiers to knock on doors and ask for votes. Retail politics is capable of big and stunning surprises. They should seek to cash in on the great class divide in Nigeria and its deepening social and class contradictions. Tinubu and his fellow planners and strategists must conspire to bring about positive change. Every Nigerian; old and young, poor and rich aspires to a better life and in longing for a strong leader, who will help us beat a path out of our collective mess and execrable standards. We all accept that we need a break from the mediocre culture that has engulfed many of us as demonstrated by our lack of work ethics, penchant for short cuts, easy money, stealing and conversion of public funds, indiscipline, lack of patriotism, erosion of traditional values and dislocated religious beliefs.

The stakes are high and the time for Tinubu to build a lasting legacy is now. The problem with Tinubu’s is there’s no political hack job too low he won’t be involved in. That has to change. He relishes and thrives on the nitty-gritty of politics, which is not bad in itself. For the love of man and country, he must begin to reign in those destructive impulses. How can a great politician not listen to people? The wounds of Action Congress of Nigeria’s (ACN) loss in Ondo state is still fresh. The opposition must learn from ACN’s electoral defeat in Ondo State. Asiwaju by his own ill-crafted maneuver humiliated the existing power structures and fractured the fragile coalition that was fiercely anti Mimiko. For Asiwaju, Chutzpah is graduating into hubris and he needs to get the memo fast. He cannot claim to know it all. In your face imposition is what created a contest in Ondo state, without it, there would have been no contest, the Labour Party (LP) would have self-destruct.

Poverty defines politics in Nigeria. Candidates only needs to distribute rice, T-shirts and Ankara for the poor masses and money for the traditional rulers to get elected. Our people’s psyche has been twisted by poverty. Asiwaju understands this and plays the cards deftly; he honed his political skills in Lagos where he’s bred a fanatical base of supporters throughout his career. Poverty must not be discounted from the winning strategy. It is hard to think right when preoccupied by bread and butter issues. I admit he is a master strategist, tactician and a certified hustler with dye in the wool qualities of made in America political hucksterism. I also know his successes is beginning to exact its detrimental cost. He’s fed his base on a cocktail of merit, cronyism, area boy style patronage and intense graft. He must actively seek to lessen the potency of this cocktail. Imposition of candidates are a given in our political landscape. Even our revered Chief Awolowo imposed candidates but he did it by stealth. Every political party in this country without exception has always rewarded loyalists and favourite sons and daughters with positions. They all put forth anointed candidates and actively discourage contested primaries. The difference is, Asiwaju does his without care and respect. He came to Ondo state, rubbished people and asked them to capitulate or go to hell. He thought they would say yes sir. To hell they went and became masters in hell compared to serving in heaven without defined job description.

What Asiwaju does not know is that he does not need to build himself anymore. He is already built. His attempt at remodeling himself by his frequent ego trips is a wild goose chase. I hope he can see the missing variable in this equation of power and solve the puzzle. He has the unique opportunity to lead and leave a lasting legacy for his people and Nigerians by helping us find and elect a leader and staying in the background to help us build formidable political institutions. Time, energy and resources are at his disposal if he can conquer his self. Asiwaju is a great man, an icon and no one can take that away from him. Show me that Yoruba man except Chief Awolowo with the political bonafides he has? A leader must embrace influence to gain power. That is the lesson for Tinubu. I hope he listens, for the love of country over self.

OsunDefender