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<\/div>\n<\/div>\nKenya has deported opposition supporter and lawyer, Miguna Miguna, following his role in the unofficial swearing-in of opposition leader Raila Odinga as \u201cthe people\u2019s president\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Miguna has boarded a flight to take him to Canada, where he is a citizen.<\/p>\n
The government says Mr Miguna renounced his Kenyan nationality, which he denies.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the mock inauguration, the government took Kenyan TV channels off air so they couldn\u2019t broadcast it.<\/p>\n
Mr Odinga boycotted last year\u2019s election re-run, saying it would be rigged in favour of President Uhuru Kenyatta.<\/p>\n
He and his supporters consider him the rightful leader of Kenya.<\/p>\n
What was the \u201cswearing-in\u201d about?<\/h2>\n
In August, Mr Odinga ran for president against Mr Kenyatta.<\/p>\n
He lost, but the country\u2019s Supreme Court said the election wasn\u2019t transparent, prompting a re-run in October.<\/p>\n
Mr Odinga declined to enter this race, saying nothing had changed, and Mr Kenyatta won 98% of the vote, with only 39% turnout.<\/p>\n
But after letting Mr Kenyatta govern for two months, he held his unofficial swearing-in ceremony at Uhuru Park in Nairobi on 30 January.<\/p>\n
During an oath signed and conducted by Mr Miguna, Mr Odinga declared himself \u201cthe people\u2019s president\u201d.<\/p>\n
How did the government respond?<\/h2>\n
In a word, badly.<\/p>\n
President Kenyatta took three TV channels off air, with only two resuming broadcasting this week \u2013 and only on subscription services, not free-to-air.<\/p>\n
On 31 January, police arrested TJ Kajwang, a lawyer who witnessed the ceremony.<\/p>\n
Two days later, they broke down Mr Miguna\u2019s door in a dawn raid and also detained him.<\/p>\n
Mr Miguna says he was then kept \u201cin unlawful incommunicado detention for five days under the most horrendous, cruel and inhumane conditions imaginable\u201d.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, he appeared before a court outside Nairobi and was charged with \u201cbeing present and consenting to the administration of an oath to commit a capital offence, namely treason\u201d.<\/p>\n
What has happened to Mr Miguna?<\/h2>\n
The court had ordered that Mr Miguna be bailed following his hearing, but this did not happen.<\/p>\n
Videos posted on social media showed him on board a flight to Amsterdam, from where he was due to connect to Canada.<\/p>\n
His departure angered his supporters who questioned what right the government had to deport Mr Miguna, who was born in Kenya.<\/p>\n
Under Article 17 of the Kenyan Constitution, a person born in Kenya can only have their citizenship revoked if it was acquired by fraud, if they or their parents were already a citizen of another country, or if the person was older than eight when they were found in Kenya.<\/p>\n
The government has since issued a statement saying that under the old constitution, Kenyans couldn\u2019t hold dual-citizenship meaning that Mr Miguna\u2019s acquisition of a Canadian passport in 1988 cost him his Kenyan nationality.<\/p>\n
Although Mr Miguna successfully applied for a Kenyan passport in 2009, the government says this application was invalid since he didn\u2019t declare his Canadian citizenship.<\/p>\n
The government added that Mr Miguna never applied for Kenyan nationality once the constitution changed in 2010 to permit dual nationality.<\/p>\n
Mr Miguna is yet to respond to this explanation.<\/p>\n
Earlier he had said he never renounced his Kenyan citizenship and would never do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe constitution is crystal clear: no one can invalidate or purport to cancel the citizenship of a Kenyan born citizen,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Who is Miguna Miguna?<\/h2>\n
Mr Miguna is the leader of the National Resistance Movement, a civil disobedience organisation linked to the opposition.<\/p>\n
On 30 January, the government declared it an organised criminal group.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t Mr Miguna\u2019s first brush with the law.<\/p>\n
In 1988, he was arrested by the then government of President Daniel arap Moi.<\/p>\n
Mr Miguna then went to Canada where he claimed political asylum, according to his website.<\/p>\n
He only began supporting Mr Odinga in 2017.<\/p>\n
Five years earlier he had published a book called Peeling Back the Mask in which he criticised Mr Odinga\u2019s leadership as prime minister.<\/p>\n
In 2013, he backed Mr Kenyatta in the presidential elections.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n
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