Nigerian defence lawyer arrested

Lagos - Tunji Abayomi, lawyer of the convicted former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, was arrested in his office yesterday. Four plainclothes security men entered Mr Abayomi's office, where he had just completed a press conference, and escorted him away, along with two of the journalists attending the conference, including a Nigerian working for the BBC. The men also searched all the reporters in the room, and confiscated copies of the text of the press conference which had been distributed to the journalists, as well as their tape recorders and notebooks.

Mr Abayomi, president of the Nigerian branch of the US-based Human Rights Africa, said in his press statement that he had found no evidence of the alleged coup plot of which General Obasanjo has been convicted by a closed court. AFP