His lawyers moved for his release to be ordered. But at the court hearing Monday, Magistrate Hafsat Soso revoked the bail and ordered that the Iranian remain in the hands of the State Security Service.
Many Nigerians were surprised in December when no one from the federal government showed up in court to object to bail. Some speculated the government would be happy to see Aghajany flee so the government would not have to deal with the matter any more. But it now appears that an error was made by officials in December and that they did not want to give Aghajani an opportunity to flee Nigeria and simply kept him in prison despite the court bail order that was issued when no one came to court to object.
Aghajany and three Nigerians were charged with importing 13 containers filled with weapons and explosives in October. The shipment came by ship from Bandar Abbas.
The Nigerian police kept watch over the containers as they sat in storage until November when Aghajany moved to re-ship them to Gambia. That is when he was arrested.
UN inspectors came to Nigeria last month to look at the shipment and question Nigerian officials. The UN has said nothing yet about what it found.
At the court hearing Monday, two of the Nigerians were freed after the charges against them were dropped. The case against Aghajany and Aliyu Jega, a Nigerian national, where deleted from the docket of the low-level Magistrates Court in Abuja at the request of Nigeria’s Justice Ministry and refilled with the Federal High Court in Lagos, where the weapons shipment was seized. No new trial date was announced.
Agence France Presse said court documents in Abuja described Aghajany as both a businessman and an officer of the Pasdaran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
