Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-16-01004/USCOURTS-ca7-16-01004-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 16-1004

BURUJI KASHAMU,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 15 CV 3159 — Charles R. Norgle, Judge.

____________________

SUBMITTED NOVEMBER 18, 2016 — DECIDED JANUARY 23, 2017

____________________

Before POSNER and KANNE, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. Buruji Kashamu, a fugitive for 

nearly two decades and the alleged leader of a heroinimporting conspiracy that inspired the hit show “Orange is 

the New Black,” appears before us for a third time not in 

person but through counsel because he is unwilling to risk 

being present in the United States, and in fact has never in 

his life been in the United States. See “Man Who Inspired 

Orange is the New Black Elected Senator in Nigeria” The 

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2 No. 16-1004

Guardian, Apr. 16, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/

world/2015/apr/16/alleged-drug-kingpin-wanted-us-electedsenator-nigeria (visited Jan. 20, 2017).

In 1998 a grand jury in the Northern District of Illinois 

had charged him and thirteen others with conspiracy to import heroin, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 963. Eleven coconspirators pleaded guilty, and one other was convicted 

after trial. But Kashamu, refusing to appear (which would 

have required his presence in the United States), insisted 

that the authorities were trying to pin crimes committed by 

his dead brother—who he said bore a striking resemblance 

to him—on him.

The present suit is Kashamu’s latest attempt to avoid answering the still-pending charges that the Justice Department has brought against him. When he surfaced in England 

six months after his indictment Justice Department lawyers 

commenced what turned out to be a four-year legal battle 

seeking his extradition to the United States—unsuccessfully. 

Later Kashamu moved to dismiss the American indictment 

on the ground that the doctrine of collateral estoppel barred 

his prosecution by the United States. We denied that motion, 

explaining that the English magistrate’s refusal to authorize 

his extradition to the United States had been based simply 

on the Justice Department’s inability to convince the judge 

that the person it was seeking to extradite was indeed 

Kashamu. United States v. Kashamu, 656 F.3d 679 (7th Cir. 

2011). Because the magistrate had not ruled on Kashamu’s 

guilt or innocence of the U.S. charges, the refusal to extradite 

him did not preclude further efforts to prosecute him. Id. at 

688.

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No. 16-1004 3

Three years later Kashamu again appeared before the

court, this time petitioning for a writ of mandamus to dismiss the indictment on speedy-trial grounds. Again we 

turned him down, this time on the ground that he had forfeited any speedy-trial right by remaining a fugitive, and 

noting that if “he wants to fight the charges, he has only to 

fly from Lagos to Chicago.” In re Kashamu, 769 F.3d 490, 494

(7th Cir. 2014).

Rather than do that, Kashamu devised a new strategy. 

He filed suit in the district court in Chicago in April 2015—

one month after his election to the Nigerian Senate—asking

the court to “enjoin his abduction abroad by U.S. authorities.” He claimed to have been tipped off that U.S. authorities, colluding with his political rivals, were planning to abduct him in Nigeria and drag him to Chicago to stand trial 

before he could be sworn into office as a Nigerian senator. 

He relied on a provision of the Mansfield Amendment, 

22 U.S.C. § 2291(c)(1), that states that “no officer or employee 

of the United States may directly effect an arrest in any foreign country as part of any foreign police action with respect 

to narcotics control efforts.”

A month after filing the suit, Kashamu amended the 

complaint to allege that his fear of abduction had nearly 

come true: agents of Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, along with two white men who Kashamu reasons must have been operatives of the United States Drug 

Enforcement Administration, surrounded his Lagos residence and tried to arrest him on an “invalid provisional 

warrant.” But, the complaint continues, he “refused to surrender,” and so the agents “laid siege ... keeping him prisoner in his own home for six days, until a Nigerian federal 

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court ordered them to cease their activities and depart from 

the premises.” He speculates that U.S. agents directed and 

coordinated the entire affair, and that U.S. authorities still 

are trying to extradite him. In the absence of injunctive relief, 

he maintains, he is vulnerable to “a very real threat of abduction by U.S. authorities.” 

The district court dismissed Kashamu’s complaint on the 

ground that the Mansfield Amendment does not create a

private right of action. Although the statute forbids federal 

employees to arrest a person in a foreign country on narcotics charges, the Supreme Court has repeatedly construed

statutes similar to the Mansfield Amendment as directives to 

federal agencies and their employees (i.e., “behave yourselves,” or face disciplinary action) rather than “as a conferral of the right to sue” the agencies and their employees. See,

e.g., Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, 135 S. Ct. 1378, 

1387 (2015); Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275 (2001); Thompson v. Thompson, 484 U.S. 174 (1981); California v. Sierra Club, 

451 U.S. 287 (1981).

Kashamu’s suit further lacks merit because it confuses 

an attempt by U.S. government agents to arrest him on a 

provisional warrant (a first step toward possible extradition) 

in coordination with local law enforcement, with an attempted abduction. The Mansfield Amendment is explicit in 

not prohibiting an employee of the United States, provided 

he has the approval of the United States chief of mission, 

from “being present when foreign officers are effecting an 

arrest or from assisting foreign officers who are effecting an 

arrest.” 22 U.S.C. § 2291(c)(2). The conduct of which Kashamu complains—that U.S. agents actively participated in an 

attempt by Nigerian agents to arrest him—was thus lawful.

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No. 16-1004 5

For all these reasons, the decision of the district court is

AFFIRMED.

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