Christopher Oji
A widow, Mrs Joy Anthony has appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene in the imprisonment of her son, Rufus, over an alleged murder case in France.
She lamented that her son was jailed on trumped-up charges and called on President Buhari to interface with his French counterpart, Mr. Emanuel Macron, to release her son, Mr. Rufus Anthony, currently in a French prison. Mrs Anthony, who recalled the circumstances that led to the imprisonment of her son, said he was wrongly convicted to serve 18 years for an offence he never committed, and called on both countries to carry out a judicial review of the case with a view to setting her son free from incarceration.
According to her, “My son, is currently serving a jail term in a prison at Saint-Etienne, France, over the death of his estranged wife, Rhoda, who reportedly died sometime in February 2015 in France. Rhoda separated from her husband, Rufus, abandoning her son, Michel, with her husband. This happened on February 14, 2014, when Rhoda left my son’s house only for police to storm his residence where he was living with his ex-wife, whom he begged to reunite with on December 15, 2015, one year and half later, to arrest him for the murder of Rhoda.”
She lamented that, “The police arrested my son, charged him and the court in France convicted him for being the one who saw Rhoda last and now Rufus is languishing in prison custody. He has spent about four years and seven months in jail. Even though no proof or evidence linking him to her murder, my son was sent to prison because they insisted he was the last person that saw her.”