4 Sent to Prison in Abduction of Ex-Nigeria Aide

Three Israelis and a Nigerian were sentenced to prison Tuesday for abducting a former Nigerian Cabinet minister last July and attempting to ship his unconscious body from London to Lagos, Nigeria’s capital.

The defendants, who all pleaded guilty, were Alexander Barak, 27, the admitted ringleader, who was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment; Maj. Mohammed Yusufu, 43, a military attache at the Nigerian Embassy in London, 12 years; Felix Abitol, 31, a Tunisian-born shopkeeper, 10 years, and Dr. Lev-Arie Shapiro, 43, a respected Israeli anesthesiologist, 10 years.

They admitted kidnaping Umaru Dikko in front of his London home, drugging him, placing him unconscious in a large wooden crate, and attempting to load him aboard a Nigerian cargo plane.

London’s anti-terrorist officers and airport customs men discovered the crate. Inside, they found Shapiro and Dikko, who was attached to an electrocardiogram monitor with a tracheal tube in his mouth and a blood pressure-monitoring device on his arm. An oxygen supply was also in the crate.

Tuesday’s prison sentences came as a surprise to relatives of the Israelis in the courtroom. They said later that they thought the accused men would simply be deported.

According to testimony, Nigerian officials approached Barak, a businessman with connections in Lagos, and persuaded him to try to get Dikko, transport minister in a former Nigerian regime, back to Lagos. He had fled to London.

Nigerian officials charged that Dikko misappropriated millions of dollars in government bonds and hid them in U.S. and Swiss banks. They insisted that he be returned to Nigeria to answer charges.

The British allowed Dikko to live in London while they acted on an extradition request, which was complicated by the suspicion that the charges against him were political.

During the trial, defense lawyers suggested that the Israelis might have been recruited by Mossad, the nation’s secret intelligence service, to enable Israel to improve its relations with Nigeria.