Legal costs soar to €400,000 in 23 hearings
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THE controversial case of Pamela Izevbekhai has now appeared 23 times before the courts here.
Lawyers have represented the State in 20 of those hearings with the legal costs so far reckoned to be about €400,000.
The case will be raised at least twice more in the Supreme Court and heard in the European Court of Human Justice in Strasbourg before the legal arguments over her proposed deportation to Nigeria are completed.
She has been fighting the case through the High Court and Supreme Court since January 2006 after she was informed her application for asylum was refused.
Last week the Irish Independent disclosed that members of the Garda national immigration bureau had obtained affidavits showing that her claim that an obstetrician at a hospital in Lagos had delivered her baby, Elizabeth in February 1993 and had treated her before she died from complications after female circumcision were false.
Dr Joseph Unokanjo said an affidavit allegedly sworn by him earlier was a forgery. He reported that he had delivered Pamela's daughter, Naomi, in 2000 and this had been her first pregnancy.
A separate affidavit confirmed that Elizabeth's "death certificate", which had also been presented in evidence to the court on behalf of Pamela Izevbekhai, was also a fake.
Following the disclosure, Mrs Izevbekhai admitted they were forgeries.
Inquiries were carried out by gardai and officials from the Irish Embassy in Abuja in Nigeria.
Alleged irregularities in Mrs Izevbekhai's asylum history were also probed.
- TOM BRADY
