Kenneth Koseyem Ehigiene

On the cold morning of 18 December 2002, my life was taken from me without a single shot being fired.

I was arrested in the Netherlands for crimes I did not commit, in places I had never been, alongside people I had never met. Somewhere out there, someone had become me. My name, my date of birth, my place of birth, my identity, all of it had been cloned and used by another man. And when the law came looking, it did not come for him. It came for me.

What followed was a nightmare that stretched across two countries and two legal systems. I was locked away in the Bijlmerbajes prison in Amsterdam while Dutch and German authorities held on to a case built on a foregone conclusion: that the man in their files and the man in their cell were one and the same. Eight lawyers would eventually fight for my freedom. Some failed. Some refused to give up. On 29 July 2003, I finally walked out of Bijlmerbajes, but I walked out into a freedom I had to learn to rebuild piece by piece: my name, my business, my family’s trust in a world that had treated my innocence as an inconvenience.

I wrote this book, together with co-author Barbara Tah Gwanmesia, because my story is not only mine. It belongs to everyone who has ever been judged before being heard. It is a warning about what happens when bureaucracy stops asking questions, and it is proof that perseverance, forgiveness and faith can carry a person through the darkest of systems. The renowned Dutch crime journalist Peter R. de Vries, who followed my case, honoured this book with his foreword.

Today I share my story so that what happened to me does not quietly happen to someone else. Every court document from my case is included in the book’s appendices because I want you to see it: this is not fiction. This happened. And it could happen to anyone.

My story is available here in English (Foregone Conclusion), Dutch (Bij Voorbaat Veroordeeld) and German (Fataler Justizirrtum), as paperback, ebook and audiobook.

Thank you for being here, and for hearing me out at last.

— Kenneth