The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was tasked with locating Dikko and bringing him back to Nigeria to stand trial.
However, Mossad Director-General Nahum Admoni decided that Dikko was probably in London, which had become a haven for Nigerian exiles critical of the new regime.
Mossad field officers (katsas), accompanied by Nigerian security service agents led by ex-Nigerian Army Major Mohammed Yusufu, traveled to London.
The Mossad agents rented rooms in hotels catering to tourists from Africa, and posed as anti-apartheid activists.
Meanwhile, Mossad recruited Levi-Arie Shapiro, an Israeli doctor who was a consultant anesthetist and director of the intensive care unit at HaSharon Hospital.
Shapiro's job would be to drug Dikko, and insert an endotracheal tube to keep him from choking on his own vomit while being transported in a crate.
[citation needed] Late in the evening of 3 July 1984, a Nigeria Airways Boeing 707 arrived at Stansted Airport from Lagos.
Seventeen men were arrested;[5] four were convicted and sentenced to prison terms of 10 to 14 years: Shapiro, Barak, Abithol, and Yusufu.
In retaliation, two British engineers in Nigeria were arrested and given fourteen-year prison sentences for allegedly stealing a private jet.