Lawyers for Miguna Miguna say Kenyan authorities have detained and are once again trying to deport him.
Miguna spent the night at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport police station on Monday following a failed attempt by airport security officials to kick him out of the country.
Last night’s action came in defiance of a court order letting him enter the country.
According to his attorney, several dozen plainclothes officers dragged Miguna onto an Emirates airline plane bound for Dubai, but Miguna eventually forced himself back off the plane.
Live footage broadcast by private Kenyan TV station Citizen showed Miguna in the doorway of what appeared to be an Emirates plane shouting at a crew member: “I’m not going anywhere, you cannot take me from my country by force.”
Interior ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka told Reuters on Tuesday he was working on a statement but could not immediately comment.
“There was an attempt to force him onto the plane and he resisted justifiably,” said Orengo, who said he witnessed Miguna being “terribly manhandled, pushed and dragged” by plainclothes officers at the airport.
Orengo said the officers then took the politician off the plane and briefly held him at airport immigration offices before taking him to a police station in the airport in the early hours of Tuesday.
“I don’t know where he is now,” said Orengo.” I fear they are trying to get him on a flight out of the country using any aircraft that would accept them.”
FMiguna Miguna was deported last month during a crackdown by the government after a symbolic swearing-in of opposition leader Raila Odinga as president.
A Kenyan court then ordered that Miguna’s Kenyan passport be restored and that he be granted entry to the country.
It is unclear whether this new dispute will impact an agreement announced this month between opposition leader Odinga and President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The rival politicians vowed to unify the country after elections last year in which about 100 people were killed, most of them in clashes between opposition supporters and security forces.
Odinga came to the airport on Monday night to attempt to lobby for Miguna to be admitted to the country, Orengo said.
He said that the return of Miguna’s passport was one condition for an enabling environment for political dialogue, but did not specify any new plans by the opposition.
