How Kashamu’s death ends drug Case No. 1:94-cr-00172 in Chicago

Sen. Buruji Kashamu had used the last 22 years fighting the plans to extradite him to the United States to face a drug charge filed as Case No. 1:94-cr-00172.

The United States since 1998 had tried to get him to face trial, first by filing two extradition requests against him in the UK. But the moves failed as the battle continued in Nigeria.

Kashamu, a dual citizen of Nigeria and Benin, was charged in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Chicago,Illinois, along with 13 other persons, with conspiracy to import heroin into the United States and distribute it in 1998.

The Jury had agreed that Kashamu was the leader of the drug cartel and he was indicted both in his own name and under what the government believed to be two aliases that he used: “Alaji” (the principal alias, the government thought) and “Kasmal”.

But Buruji used the instrumentality of the law and consistent pleading of innocence and mistaken identity to avoid being shipped to the U.S.