Obinwanne Okeke, the 32-year-old Nigerian arrested in the United States last August, has accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation of accessing his mobile phones and laptops illegally, a development he said was enough ground for the charges against him to be dismissed.
Mr Okeke, through his lawyers, said in a preliminary objection filed in the U.S. court in December that his phones were seized by the F.B.I. agents that arrested him and searched without proper procedure.
In the preliminary objection, the lawyers further argued that all evidence obtained from Mr Okeke’s phones and laptops should fall under the ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ doctrine and subsequently removed from admissible evidence in court during trial. The prosecutors said Mr Okeke was informed he could remain silent, but he willingly agreed to let authorities search his devices by providing passwords to them.
The F.B.I. said months of investigation exposed Mr Okeke as the principal suspect that executed the fraud. The agency later obtained a warrant for his arrest when he visited the U.S. and was about to return to Nigeria on August 6, 2019. Ahead of the February 18 date initially scheduled for commencement of trial, the defence team began raising preliminary objections to get the matter dismissed and for Mr Okeke to return to Nigeria.
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