Israeli filmmakers Rudy Rochman, arrested in Nigeria over alleged contact with separatists
Three Israelis shooting a documentary in a separatist region in southeast Nigeria were arrested last week, the Foreign Ministry confirmed Tuesday.
According to media reports, Nigerian authorities arrested
and interrogated the trio on suspicion that they had come into contact with
Biafran separatists.
Family members of one of the men stressed to the Times of
Israel that the allegations were entirely unfounded, and that separatist social
media accounts took advantage of the Israelis’ trip to claim that the three
were supporting Biafran separatist groups.
The Israeli Embassy in Abuja is following the case closely
and is in contact with Nigerian authorities, according to the Foreign Ministry.
One of the Israelis arrested is Rudy Rochman, a Zionist
activist with almost 95,000 followers on Instagram. Making the flight with him
were filmmaker Noam Leibman and French-Israeli journalist E. David Benaym.
The Israelis were in Nigeria to film “We Were Never
Lost,” a documentary exploring Jewish
communities in African countries such as Kenya, Madagascar, Uganda, and
Nigeria.
They took off from Ben Gurion Airport on July 5 and landed
in Nigeria the next day.
According to locals, the crew was detained at a synagogue
during Friday night services in the Igbo village of Ogidi by Nigeria’s secret
police and taken to Abuja.
The filmmakers were aware of the political sensitivity
surrounding the filming of the Igbo community. Last Thursday, the We Were Never
Lost Facebook page stressed: “We do not take any position on political
movements as we are not here as politicians nor as a part of any governmental
delegations.”
The group met last week with Igbo leader Eze Chukwuemeka Eri
and presented him with a framed Shiviti made in Jerusalem.
Rochman also presented another Igbo community with a Torah
scroll whose cover was designed by British-Israeli street artist Solomon Souza.
The Igbo consider themselves a lost tribe of Israel.
In January, a conflict broke out in southeastern Nigeria
between Nigerian forces and the military wing of the Indigenous People of
Biafra (IPOB) movement. The fight is ongoing.
A previous unilateral declaration of independence by the
Igbo people in 1967 sparked a brutal 30-month civil war that left more than a
million dead.
In 2018, fugitive pro-Biafran separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu
gave a radio broadcast saying he was in Israel and indicating he owed his
survival to the Jewish state.
Kanu, a former London estate agent, heads IPOB and the
outlawed pirate radio station Radio Biafra.
He maintains the Igbo people, who are in the majority in
southeast Nigeria, are a lost tribe of Israel and it is his mission to lead
them to the promised land of Biafra.
Kanu is facing treason charges in his homeland. He was
arrested by Interpol in the Czech Republic in June 2021.
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