He was jailed for four and a half years by a Southwark Crown Court in Central London, UK in April 2022 over his social media posts against some ethnic groups in Nigeria.
Adeyinka Grandson, president of the Young Yorubas for Freedom (YYF) secessionist group has alleged that the United Kingdom authorities tried to kill him while in prison.
Adeyinka made this known in a press statement he issued on Tuesday, some hours after he was released from a UK prison.
“I was a British Political Prisoner for two years, three months and ten days and my conviction was malicious, an assault on free speech and a stain on the English judiciary,” he said.
SaharaReporters earlier broke the news of Adeyinka’s release.
He was jailed for four and a half years by a Southwark Crown Court in Central London, UK in April 2022 over his social media posts against some ethnic groups in Nigeria.
Grandson, also known as Adeyinka Shoyemi, a UK-based Nigerian of Yoruba descent, was known for his social media attacks on people of Igbo extraction as well as criticism of the Hausa-Fulani.
He was first arrested by the Scotland Yard Counter Terrorism Command and the Metropolitan Police under the approval of the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London in August 2019.
In his statement, the young freedom fighter alleged that he was infected with coronavirus and was served with poisoned food by prison authorities who tried to kill him over his political views and constant attacks on Igbo and Fulani in Nigeria.
He said, “Whilst in prison, they infected me with coronavirus and poisoned my food in order to kill me. They are doing all these because of my political views that are critical of the Ibo and the Fulani’s immigrants in Nigeria, whom I have accused on social media of being the proxies of the English Establishment in the suppression and subjugation of the Yoruba in Nigeria.
“There is, therefore, a significant risk to the lives, liberty and physical safety of my children and I in England from the MI5/MI6 because of my political belief. The intervention of the Government of the Federation of Nigeria, in my case, is therefore, imperative to bring my children and I back home to Yorubaland from England.”
Adeyinka also alleged that the UK court denied him the right to tender evidence to defend himself against the allegation of terrorism made against him by his ex-wife.
He continued: “I was not permitted by the Judge to use my witnesses, the documents that I had available, or to mention to the jury the involvement and motives of my ex-wife for reporting my political activism on social media to the Police as terrorism and racial hatred offences over the custody matter of our children, which made my conviction unsafe.”
“I wish to see the Yoruba Police Service in Lagos be given the power to stop and search the English in Lagos and discriminate against them for being white because the English Metropolitan Police Service in London have always stopped and searched the Yoruba in London and discriminated against them for being black,” he added.
