The saga surrounding Miguna Miguna's controversial detention at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport's (JKIA) will go on record of historical incidents that characterize diplomatic mix-ups.
In 2005, another Kenyan by birth Sanjay Shah spent 13 months living at East Africa's second best airport after Kigali International Airport and the continents ninth best.
Shah had left Kenya for Britain on a British overseas citizen's passport to visit his sister and decide if he and his family should emigrate to the UK.
[caption caption="A man stranded at JKIA in a different incident"]
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However, the Immigration Authorities became suspicious of his one-way ticket and he was turned back at Heathrow Airport with his passport stamped "Prohibited Immigrant".
These words would spell his doom and turn him stateless as the immigration authorities in Nairobi became reluctant to let him back into Kenya with the then Vice President and Minister in charge of Immigration Moody Awori, asserting that the government could do nothing to intervene.
The Kenyan constitution then required Shah to surrender his Kenyan passport and with it, his automatic right of entry as dual citizenship was not allowed.
Since airports are considered a transit zone and the airport's lounge technically an international no-man's-land, Shah felt that it was the only place where he could stay and in his view, not jeopardize his chances of gaining British citizenship.
This saw him spend more than a year at the airport that in his admission, he came to literally know every shop at the airport, every shopkeeper, the sweepers, the security officers and the immigration officers.
After falling foul of Britain's citizenship law, Shah had to survive on food and clean clothes delivered by his wife, Rasmita, and son, Veer during their occasional visits and at times, the coffee and food given by the sympathetic waitresses from the airport cafés.
The stalemate was finally over after the British High Commission approved his application for a British passport and grant him citizenship.
Here is his video courtesy of AP:
[video:]
