Dutch-Nigerian activist Sunny Ofehe remains a suspect in the Netherlands and at a future date will be summoned to appear in court, his lawyer told Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

Ofehe had been arrested on 22 February on suspicion of people smuggling and forgery. Since his release on 8 March, Ofehe and his lawyer, Valérie Vallenduuk-Bobeck had been waiting to hear from the authorities whether the charges would be maintained or dropped.

Still a suspect?
Vallenduuk-Bobeck says she does not know if Ofehe is still a suspect of both charges and she expects to be given access to her client’s entire file by the end of April. After Ofehe’s release, she said she doubted whether the Public Prosecutor had sufficient evidence to launch a criminal case against her client.

According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, the suspicions against Ofehe first arose when he was at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport to pick up a man and a woman arriving on a flight from Nigeria. The man was detained by immigration officials because the woman was travelling on a passport in another person’s name.

“Madam”
The woman later told the police that she had been threatened by a so-called "madam" from Italy using voodoo practices to coerce her into working as a prostitute. Later she filed a complaint for human trafficking. Presumably, according to the Public Prosecutor's Office, human traffickers had intended to force her into prostitution in Italy.

The man’s lawyer, Saskia Bijl, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) that the man, a Nigerian whose name she would not disclose, had been charged with people smuggling, had served his sentence and had later returned to Nigeria. She said they would appeal the case.

Girlfriend
Bijl said she believed that the woman, aged 21, was still “somewhere in the Netherlands” in a safe house for potential victims of human trafficking. The Public Prosecutor’s office has not reacted to requests by RNW in the past weeks for information on her status and whereabouts.

The woman was her client’s girlfriend, the lawyer revealed. Bijl said that her client was “flabergasted” when his girlfriend accused him of human trafficking. She explained that a special police unit at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport informs potential victims of trafficking that they can remain in the Netherlands if they lay charges for trafficking. This special protection granted to potential victims of trafficking is called the “B9 procedure” in the Netherlands. It was implemented to encourage frightened victims of trafficking to lay charges against traffickers and to facilitate prosecution.

Bijl told RNW that the woman, who testified during her client’s trial, “really wanted to stay in the Netherlands. A really strange story. It doesn’t ring true”, she said.

Victimised
Ofehe denies any involvement in human trafficking. Asked about his relationship with the man, he said that they grew up together in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region, and hadn’t seen each other for many years. He added that the man had followed his campaign against environmental damage caused by oil extraction in the oil rich region.

“We got connected on facebook a few days before he was traveling to Prague with KLM and we agreed to meet up during his transit and discuss the possibility of inviting his boss as a speaker in the February 2010, Hope for Niger Delta Campaign's Peace Consolidation Conference in The Hague.” Ofehe was the main organiser of this conference. Earlier this year he took part in a special hearing in Dutch parliament on the environmental impact of the Shell oil giant's activities in the Niger Delta.

“I am just being victimised,” he said.