Kenny has been living in Glasgow for over a year. On Monday 6 October Kenny was detained when going to report at the Home Office in Glasgow and taken to Dungavel detention centre. The next day late in the afternoon he was taken to a detention centre in England. He has been given a removal date for late on Thursday evening. There is not a lot of time to help Kenny, please see below what you can do immediately to help him.

Kenny is a regular volunteer and a good friend of everyone at the Unity Centre and is a very popular member of the local church's bowling club, where he plays every evening. Friends visited him in Dungavel on Monday evening, and say Kenny was in low spirits after being detained.

If Kenny is returned to Nigeria he faces serious problems. He came to the UK in 2000 after his father, who was a leader of the O'odua People's Congress (OPC) was assassinated by others in the group who wanted to overthrow his leadership. Kenny was living at home at the time but managed to escape by the back door. He believes he too would have been killed if the men who killed his father had found him.

He worked on arrival in the UK to pay back the agent who brought him here. Kenny believed he was working legitimately but when he applied for asylum in 2007 he was told he had been here illegally. In 2007 he was detained, but campaigning by Unity and other friends saw him released. Since then he has been fighting to stay here in Glasgow, the city that has become his home.

If Kenny is sent back home, he believes the men who killed his father will still be looking for him, even though he was not a member of the OPC himself.

The most recent US State Human Rights Report on Nigeria, published in March 2007, states

that during 2006: The government‚s human rights record remained poor, and government officials at all levels continued to commit serious abuses. The most significant human rights problems included the abridgement of citizens‚ right to change their government; politically motivated and extrajudicial killings by security forces; vigilante killings; impunity; beatings of prisoners, detainees, and suspected criminals; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and prolonged pretrial detention; executive interference in the judiciary and judicial corruption; infringements of privacy rights; restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly, religion and movement; domestic violence and discrimination against women; female genital mutilation (FGM); child abuse and child sexual exploitation; societal violence; ethnic, regional, and religious discrimination; and trafficking in persons for purposes of prostitution and forced labor.

Please help Kenny get released once again and back to his friends in Glasgow.

Please help by contacting the Home Office and Virgin Atlantic to request that the flight be stopped and Kenny is not forcibly returned to Nigeria.

1) Fax/Phone/Email: Steve Ridgeway, CEO Virgin Atlantic Airways - using the model letter KennyVA.doc attached, which you can copy/amend/write your own. Please ensure inclusion of the details - Kenny Olwole Ogunbowale due to be forcibly removed from the UK on Thursday 9th October on Virgin Atlantic Airways flight VS651 @ 22:30hrs from London Heathrow to Lagos, Nigeria.

Fax: 08701 900 959

Phone: 087 0574 7747 / outside UK: +44 1293 562 345

Email:  customer.services@fly.virgin.com or go to the following link and fill it out the forms and make specific in the comments that deportation flights should not be operated by Virgin:  https://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/customerrelations/contact_us/email.jsp


2) Please send urgent faxes/emails immediately to Rt. Hon. Jacqui Smith Secretary for State, asking that Kenny Olwole Ogunbowale be granted protection in the UK. Please use the attached "model letter" (KennyJS.doc) which you can copy/amend/write your own version, if you do so, please remember to include his HO ref: O1114072.

Fax 020 7035 4745 / from outside UK+44 207 035 4745


Please let the campaign know of any faxes/emails sent:
The UNITY Centre
30 Ibrox Street
Glasgow
G51 1AQ
0141 427 7992
www.unitycentreglasgow.org
 info@unitycentreglasgow.org


*No fax machine? No matter!*
If you have a computer and access to the internet you do not need a fax machine to fax.

There are two methods of faxing:
>From your browser go to:
 http://www.tpc.int/sendfax.html
(the number must be entered with the country code
so 020 7035 4745 (Home Office) would be 44 20 7035 4745)

Send a fax via email
Use this email address format :
 remote-printer.recipient_name@fax_number.iddd.tpc.int

So, to send the fax to Jacqui Smith put:
 remote-printer.Jacqui_Smith@442070354745.iddd.tpc.int
Just copy your fax message into the body of the email.

End of Bulletin: