Posts Tagged ‘illegal arrest’
Cisco blasted for arranging arrest of whistleblower – as a fugitive
Networking giant Cisco was blasted by a Canadian judge for arranging for the criminal arrest of a whistleblower who was suing the company.
Peter Adekeye launched an anti-trust case against his former employer in the US District Court for Northern California and was giving his deposition where he lived in Vancouver when four coppers entered the room and interrupted the hearing.
According to Ars Technica. Adekeye was jailed while the legal mess was sorted out. Part of the problem was that the highly expensive legal team for Cisco had done its best to convince the Canadian authorities that Adekeye was a “sinister” Nigerian on the run from 97 charges of illegal computer hacking…
US prosecutors invoked “emergency provisions” of the Extradition Act to obtain the arrest warrant…
When the extradition documentation actually arrived, the judge would discover that it was a pack of “innuendo, half truths, and complete falsehoods.”
Throughout all of this, the judges and the Canadian legal system was apparently unaware that all the made-up crimes were part of the bigger anti-trust battle Adekeye was waging against Cisco…
Justice McKinnon was shocked that a trivial $14,000 civil case had been transformed into a criminal proceeding and engaged the full might and resources of two governments, with the aim of misleading one of Canada’s senior trial courts.
Cisco allegedly engineered it so that the arrest took place in the presence of a US High Court Judge, Special Master, George Fisher, with Cisco’s lawyers insisting on filming the entire arrest on the record. It was clearly an attempt to humiliate Adekeye and weaken his case.
McKinnon said that it all spoke “volumes for Cisco’s duplicity”.
What should be most alarming is that Cisco could use extradition laws and their buddies in the US government to have those who challenged their dominion locked up under American laws – in Canada.
